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After the Crash sensitive the debris from the crashes were, it began a new and much more vital phase of the operation. For reasons that can be surmised if not proved, all releases of news were stopped, and all testimony and evidence that might con- flict with the official line (that it was no more than a weather balloon) were sealed off from the public. The first two USAAF men to become aware of the radical Ok THE U.S. government realized how important and nature of some of the crash wreckage—Major Marcel and Cap- tain Cavitt—were officially and legally silenced. Mac Brazel, who found the material, was taken into custody on some national-security pretense and during several days with the military was convinced that it would be in his and the coun- try's best interests if he would change his story to coincide with the official position. Brazel went to his grave without ever speaking out to the contrary. To make certain that no one beyond the government's legal control got his or her hands on any of the wreckage (which would have proved that the recovered object was not a balloon and that the government was lying), a team went out from Roswell AAF to the Foster ranch site, and from Kirtland AAF or Alamogordo AAF or Sandia to the Plains of San Agustin, to pick up every little scrap. As an indication of the extreme 157