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neither the secretary of defense nor the director of intelligence had considered a disclosure like this as even a remote possibility. On November 7, 1944, the day FDR was elected to his fourth and final term, his chief adviser, Harry Hopkins, had described the new vice president Harry Truman as a man who couldn't block a hat but who shouldn't be underestimated. And James Forrestal, the man to whom he was speaking at the time, now understood what he meant as the secretary sat across from the now President Harry Truman. This was a basic yes/no question, and although Forrestal and Hillenkoetter had a knee jerk reflex answer, "no, " Forrestal quickly saw that it wasn't that easy. As wartime administrators their first response was naturally to disclose nothing, abiding by the old saw that what the people don't know, they don't need to know. But President Truman, who had not come from a military background, had seen something neither Forrestal nor Hillenkoetter had seen. If these ships could evade our radar and land anywhere at will, what would stop them from landing in front of the White House or, for that matter, the Kremlin? Certainly not the U.S. Army Air Force. "So what do we say when they land, " I'm told that Truman continued, "and create more panic in the streets than if we'd disclosed what we think we know now?" "But we really don't know anything, " the director of intelligence said. "Not a thing until we analyze what we've retrieved. " But both the secretary of defense and director of intelligence agreed with President Truman that he was right to be skeptical, especially on his final point about disclosure. "So can we postpone coming to any conclusions at least until after you've meet with General Twining?" Admiral Hillenkoetter asked. "| think he'll provide some of the answers we're all looking for. " While Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter and James Forrestal were briefing President Truman on their plan for the working group, Gen. Nathan P. Twining was completing his preliminary analysis of the reports and material sent to Wright Field. Almost immediately, he dispatched the remains of the aliens to the Bethesda Naval Hospital and the Walter Reed Army Hospital for further analysis by the two military services. The aircraft itself remained at Wright Field but, as he would promise in his memo to the Army Air Forces command, General Twining was preparing to distribute the material from the wreckage among the different military and civilian bureaus for further evaluation. He'd already been cautioned by Admiral Hillenkoetter that new security classifications had been put in place regarding the Roswell intelligence package. No one within the military other than names he would receive from the President himself had the full security clearance to learn the complete story. about Roswell that Twining would deliver to the President and other members of a working group. Within three months after he'd been dispatched to New Mexico to learn what had happened at Roswell, General Twining met with President Truman, as Hillenkoetter and Forrestal had suggested, and explained exactly what he believed the army had pulled out of the desert. It was almost beyond comprehension, he described to the President, nothing that could have come from this planet. If the Russians were working on something like this, it was so secret that not even their own military commanders knew anything about it, and the United States would have to establish a crash program just to prepare a defense. So it was Twining's assessment that what they found outside of Roswell was, in his words, "not of this earth. " Now President Truman had heard it, he told Forrestal after Twining had left for Ohio, "directly from the horse's mouth, " and he was convinced. This was bigger than the Manhattan Project and required that it be managed on a larger scale and obviously for a longer period. The group proposed by Forrestal and Hillenkoetter had to consider what they were really managing and for how long. Were they only trying to keep one secret - that an extraterrestrial alien spaceship crashed at Roswell - or were they hiding what would quickly become the largest military R&D undertaking in history, the management of what would become America's relationship with extraterrestrials? General Twining had made it clear in his preliminary analysis that they were investigating the whole phenomenon of flying disks, including Roswell and any other encounter that happened to take place. These were hostile entities, the general said, who, if they were on a peaceful mission, would have not avoided contact by taking evasive maneuvers even as they penetrated our airspace and observed our most secret military installations. They had a technology vastly superior to ours, which we had to study and exploit in case they turned more aggressive. If we were forced to fight a war in outer space, we would have to understand the nature of the enemy better, especially if it came to preparing the American people for an enemy they had to face. So investigate first, he suggested, but prepare for the day when the whole undertaking would have to be disclosed. 31 "Well, " President Truman said. "Do we?"