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15 tioning brought out the approximate date—early July 1947— but no more information. Here was another piece of some puzzle (or possibly of several different puzzles), but so far the pieces were small, vague, and widely scattered. They formed nothing approaching a coherent shape. But even these few bits of data were an improvement on all previous stories of crashed saucers. Then, on February 10, 1979, while Moore was rooting through the newspaper files in the main library of the Univer- sity of Minnesota, he came across several clippings describing much the same thing Jesse Marcel had outlined to Stan Fried- man a year earlier. It was the breakthrough they had been looking for. Jesse Marcel apparently was exactly who he claimed to be, and as such was an important cog in a machine whose bare outline was just starting to take form. He had indeed been in the right place at the right time to become aware of the crash and the wreckage and the return of the mysterious material to Roswell Army Air Field. The one-time intelligence officer of an elite Army Air Forces unit was exactly the sort of firsthand witness who could propel the story of the crash into the history books. After more than thirty years the fortress of official secrecy had developed its first crack. The clippings opened up all sorts of opportunities for addi- tional investigation. The name of the rancher on whose prop- erty the thing had crashed was there: William "Mac" Brazel. There were several important military people, including Eighth Air Force commander Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey; his chief of staff, Col. Thomas Jefferson DuBose; Roswell base com- mander Col. William Blanchard, and public information officer Ist Lt. Walter Haut—who had issued the puzzling announce- ment about the recovery of the remains of a "flying disc." If any of these men could be located and persuaded to talk, the case could gain a great deal of substance. What followed was an intensive effort to dig out facts and supporting information, using the sadly limited resources available at this stage of the game. First, Friedman and Moore THE SEARCH FOR EVIDENCE BEGINS