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length wise, it looked like the fibers had reoriented themselves to the direction | was pulling in. This couldn't be cloth, but it obviously wasn't metal. It was a combination, to my unscientific eye, of a cloth woven with metal strands that had the drape and malleability of a fabric and the strength and resistance of a metal. | was on top of some of the most secret weapons projects at the Pentagon, and we had nothing like this, even under the wish- list category. There was a written description and a sketch of another device, too, like a short, stubby flashlight almost with a self-contained power source that was nothing at all like a battery. The scientists at Wright Field who examined it said they couldn't see the beam of light shoot out of it, but when they pointed the pencil-like flashlight at a wall, they could see a tiny circle of red light, but there was no actual beam from the end of what seemed like a lens to the wall as there would have been if you were playing a flashlight off on a distant object. When they passed an object in front of the source of the light, it interrupted it, but the beam was so intense the object began smoking. They played with this device a lot before they realized that it was an alien cutting device like a blowtorch. One time they floated some smoke across the light and suddenly the whole beam took shape. What had been invisible suddenly had a round, micro thin, tunnel-like shape to it. Why did the inhabitants of this craft have a cutting device like this aboard their ship? It wasn't until later, when | read military reports of cattle mutilations in which entire organs were removed without any visible trauma to the surrounding cell tissue, that | realized that the light beam cutting torch | thought was in the Roswell file was actually a surgical implement, just like a scalpel, that was being used by the aliens in medical experiments on our livestock. Then there was the strangest device of all, a headband, almost, with electrical signal pickup devices on either side. | could figure out no use for this thing whatsoever unless whoever used it did so as a fancy hair band. It seemed to be a one size fits all headpiece that did nothing, at least not for humans. Maybe it picked up brain waves like an electroencephalogram and projected a chart. But no private experiment conducted on it seemed to do anything at all. The scientists didn't even determine how to plug it in or what its source of power was because it came with no batteries or diagrams. There were nights I'd spread these articles all around me as if they were indeed Christmas presents. There were nights when I'd just take one thing out and turn it around until | almost memorized what it looked like from different angles before putting it back. The days were passing and, without having been told directly by Trudeau, | knew that he was getting anxious. We'd sit at meetings together when other people were around and he couldn't say anything, and | could almost hear his insides burst. There were times when we were alone and Trudeau almost didn't want to broach our shared secret. Outside the Pentagon there was a battle starting up all over again set to rage just as it had during the Truman and Eisenhower presidencies. Whose intelligence was accurate? Whose was truthful? Who was trying to manipulate the White House and who believed that by coloring or twisting fact that he could change the course of history? John Kennedy was leading a young administration capable of making extraordinary mistakes. And there were people at the heart of his administration whose own views of how the world should work were inspiring them to distort facts, misstate intentions, and disregard obvious realities in the hope that their views would prevail. Worse, there were those, deep within a secret government within the government, who had been placed there by the spymasters at the Kremlin. And it was those individuals we had the greatest reason to fear. Right now, Army R&D had stewardship over these bits and pieces of foreign technology from Roswell. How long we would have them | did not know. So, over a late night pot of coffee in General Trudeau's office, he decided that we would move this material out, out to defense contractors, out to where scientists would see it and where, under the guise of top secrecy, it would be in the system before the CIA could stow it where no one would find it except the very people we were trying to hide it from. "Not we, Phil, " he said. "You. You're the one who's going to get away with it. I'll just keep them off your back long enough until you do." Now, all | could think about was what I'd seen that night in 1947 and, worse, what in the world | was going to do with all this stuff next. I'd asked myself "why me?" hundreds of times since that night in the Pentagon. And asked why after fourteen years and my experience at Fort Riley | had become the inheritor of the Roswell file. But | had no answers then and no answers now. If General Trudeau had meant for this to happen when he took over R&D three years before | got there, I'll never know. He never gave me any reasons, only orders. But since he was the master strategizer, | sometimes think he believed | must have had some experience with alien encounters and wouldn't be spooked by working with the technology from the Roswell file. | never asked him about it, as strange as that seems, because the military being what it is, you don't ask. You simply do. So, now as then, | don't question. | only remember that | went forward from that night to put into development as much of the Roswell file as | could and believed that whatever happened, | was doing the right thing. 21 "This is the devil's plan, General, "| said to Trudeau that night. "What makes you think we can get away with it?"