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CONCLUSION either. 231 terrestrial craft, because the cover sticks closely to the imagery of the ufologists that already exists in the surrounding culture. Thus the secret can always be preserved. And it is possible to focus that imagery, through a few carefully crafted hoaxes, into the expectation of a particu- lar type of entity, a particular kind of craft. THE ROSWELL INCIDENT And what about Roswell? Something undoubtedly fell from the sky at Roswell in July 1947; it was picked up by the Air Force and the story was effectively covered up. The object that fell at Roswell was no weather balloon. But in all likelihood it was not part of a flying saucer There are consistent reports of hard evidence at Roswell. They concern sticks of something that looked like indestructible balsa wood, sheets of a metallic material that nothing could tear up, and a small black box. All the other stories about recovery of an intact disk and bodies of aliens on the ground came later and may well be spurious. Bill Moore himself told me they were questionable. What is certain is that the Air Force had not known of the crash until it was reported by a farmer, and that it was very eager to recover the object and to keep the whole thing secret once it knew about it. This suggests a variety of interpretations, which do not involve outer space visitors. John Keel, an experienced researcher, believes that the object that crashed at Roswell was a Fugo balloon. He states that hundreds of people have reported similar crashes in other locations, with debris identical to what was recovered at Roswell. Schoolchildren in many areas were warned not to go near the balloons if they found any. I do not find this argument very convincing. But even if the object was not a Fugo balloon, this should give us a clue to certain other possibilities. Roswell was the site for the very first air base equipped with atomic bombs. If a special type of balloon or drone, designed to monitor atmospheric radioactivity in the area, had been flown over New Mexico,