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161 operated by the U.S. Navy which may have had specially quali- fied people needed for such an investigation, or may simply have insisted on being a part of a uniquely important, interest- ing, and prestigious project. The bodies, according to the testimony of people who were directly aware of them, would probably have been more sus- ceptible to conventional analytical techniques. Medical peo- ple familiar with autopsies should have been able to do the preliminary work, since there is no indication that the bodies were so different as to baffle doctors. A scalpel may be just as effective in dividing an alien corpse into small pieces as it is on humans. Other common medical procedures, such as studying biopsies under high magnification, may have pro- duced considerable information, if not knowledge or under- standing. Security precautions surrounding the temporary or perma- nent storage of bodies would have had to be even more strin- gent than those for the wreckage, as the alien nature of the bodies would be apparent at a glance to even an untrained eye. Moreover, the matter of the strange and powerful smell of the bodies adds to the difficulty of keeping the whole thing secret. There is at least one report of widespread interest being aroused at Wright-Patterson by a most peculiar odor detected by employees in a neighboring lab not involved in the alien study. The initial admission of the nature of the smell was quickly retracted and the trail almost obliterated. The ability of the U.S. government to clamp down on all knowledge and discussion of a crash was not as well developed in 1947 as it obviously has become since then. It appears that the army learned of the crash at Foster Ranch several days after the fact, and then only because a civilian voluntarily showed some pieces to a sheriff. By the time the lid was slammed down, a lot of people had seen and handled bits of the wreckage, and others were aware of its nature. Since then, techniques for controlling such situations have obviously been refined, for none of the subsequent rumored crashes has been testified to in anything but the vaguest way. The effectiveness of the government's long-term control of AFTER THE CRASH