THE ROSWELL FILES; WHY WOULD THE GOVERNMENT WASTE TIME EXPOSING UFOS IF THERE WASN'T SOMETHING TO ALL THE STORIES?

Byline: Jane Robison

I must admit, I never paid much attention to the Roswell Incident until the Air Force recently released a detailed, 231-page report saying it was a bunch of hooey.

As a patriotic American, I believe that the government never spends any time and energy on anything that doesn't have merit.

So, naturally, when the government told me to stop thinking about something I never thought about before, I became obsessed.

I picked up the issue of Time magazine with the alien headline: ``The Roswell Files.'' This is what I learned:

On July 5, 1947, a ranch foreman working a little patch of land near Roswell, N.M., stumbled upon some shiny metallic debris. He took it to Army Air Corps personnel from the 509th Bomb Group stationed near the site, which issued a press release saying a ``flying disk'' crashed on Earth.

Following the fallout from the press release, the military brass immediately retracted its original assessment and said the debris was a weather balloon that crashed. The government denied earlier reports that all debris from the wreck, the damaged craft itself and the bodies of its alien occupants were sent to Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Dayton, Ohio, where the bodies were kept frozen in a building known as Hangar 18.

That denial created a veritable cottage industry of conspiracy buffs, theories, books, movies and government reports. Fifty years later, people around the world are still debating the significance of what later became known as the Roswell Incident and whether the U.S. government covered up vital information that it had recovered a flying saucer and extraterrestrial bodies.

After reading that account, I was hooked. I scoured the Internet, exchanging information, looking for clues to Hangar 18.

I turned on my TV and was inexorably drawn to the Sci-Fi channel, where they won't stop showing the two-hour special ``Roswell: Cover-ups and Close Encounters.'' I've become trapped on my couch, watching every alien landing movie ever made - classics such as ``Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, ``It Came From Outer Space,'' and ``The UFO Incident.''

Something began to take over my brain. I woke up with headaches and visions of Al Gore, who tells me in his mesmerizing, HAL-like voice that everything's going to be OK if I just do my share to save our planet.

I started wondering what it would be like to live on a fully evolved planet, in a society built on a vector of love.

I devoured the recent 231-page report titled ``The Roswell Report, Case Closed,'' looking for clues, signs, symbols, hidden messages, an undercurrent of truth, snippets of indecipherable logic - anything that made sense of it all.

Nothing.

In 1994, the Air Force had issued a report saying the ``spacecraft'' that supposedly crashed in the New Mexico desert was an Air Force balloon used in a top-secret program, Project Mogul, intended to monitor the atmosphere for evidence of Soviet nuclear tests.

End of story, the Air Force said. ``This is our final response to the Roswell nonsense,'' the Air Force said in 1994.

But that was before someone found further evidence lying on a coffee table in the White House near the first family's private quarters that would explain the cover-up rumors.

The report was turned over to the Air Force, which issued a new and improved final report saying that life-size dummies were used in high-altitude parachute drops from 1954 to 1959 as part of Air Force projects code-named High Dive and Excelsior.

People near Roswell obviously mistook the crash dummies for extraterrestrials.

STOP. Just hold everything.

The crash that drew everyone's suspicion was in 1947. But notice how the dummy drop didn't occur until 1954.

BINGO.

Obviously, by releasing dates that don't add up and don't begin to explain what really happened, the government is hoping to keep the conspiracy alive.

The Air Force has produced a smoking alien.

Why, you're asking, would the government release a report saying the case was closed if it really wanted the lid blown off the greatest conspiracy in the history of the world?

Because if the government told the truth, who would listen?

We're dealing with devious minds. This goes way beyond Washington. Granted, some of the finest minds working in Washington today are fiendishly clever and diabolical. But the General Accounting Office has proved time and again that people in government are inept at carrying through with clever ideas.

This conspiracy goes way beyond the D.C. beltway.

This goes straight to the top: Hollywood.

Only the players in Hollywood could devise ways to keep a colossal cash cow going into the next century, if not millennium, and actually pull it off.

Interlocking webs of book deals, movie rights, speaking engagements. Convergence, synergy. Happiness and light. It's all beginning to make sense.

The aliens never died. They escaped to Southern California and created a little family business called - Disney.

Look at the facts. Aliens are always portrayed as nice people. Disneyland is the Happiest Place on Earth. The Bible says the meek shall inherit the Earth. A little mouse called Mickey controls the planet and all commerce.

Aliens have disproportionately bulbous heads. Michael Ovitz had a big head, too big for a mere human.

It all fits.

I can rest now, knowing that the government cover-up was a Mickey Mouse deal designed to keep the conspiracy alive, provide gargantuan profits that would enhance an alternative lifestyle (on another planet) and still provide happiness and joy on Earth.

I had a dream the other night. I dreamed I was sitting face to face with Michael Eisner in an exclusive meeting with Daily News editors and reporters, most of whom were beamed up after this interview.

I had just one question for our honored guest from another planet: ``Why Roswell? Why not Palmdale?'' I asked, wide-eyed with wonder.

His answer was profoundly simple and logical.

``If we'd crashed in Palmdale, no one would have noticed anything out of the ordinary.''

Case closed.

CAPTION(S):

Drawing

Drawing: (Color) No caption (A spaceship in Roswell, New Mexico)

Jon Gerung/Daily News