The crash at Roswell is surely the most infamous UFO incident of all time. The story goes that a spaceship full of aliens crashed on a ranch and the government recovered parts of the craft and its pilots’ corpses. Much of the controversy and allegations of a cover-up stem from the government’s own initial reports that they had recovered a flying disc. Days later they claimed it had been a weather balloons.

During the summer, I read a book by Nick Redfern in which he claims that Satanic aliens are in league with the US government, so I was a little surprised to find that his book, Body Snatchers in the Desert, claims that the government didn’t find any aliens at Roswell. No, here he claims that much of the UFO lore that has been spread over the last 75 years has been government disinformation. The reality of what crashed in Roswell is much more sinister than a gang of unlucky instellar adventurers.

The crash at Roswell was actually an experimental nuclear aircraft that was piloted by a team of physically and mentally disabled people that the American government had retrieved from Japan’s infamous Unit 731 in China. Unit 731 was the Japanese equivalent to Nazi concentration camps in terms of the scientific experiments performed on human beings. Supposedly the American government gave the scientists working there a choice. They could either be executed for crimes against humanity, or they could come and work in the USA. After they joined Team America, the scientists and their remaining test subjects were covertly brought to the US and set to work on calculating how much radiation a person could be subjected to.

During this work, there was a mishap with an experimental airship that was being piloted by a group of disabled people, and when the government realised how bad this would look, they deliberately spread disinformation about aliens because that would cause them less trouble. Redfern accepts the testimony of the soldiers who saw the alien corpses, but insists that these were merely Asian people who had progeria.

This is so revolting an idea that it’s hard not to laugh. At the same time, it is a more believable explanation to the Roswell story than aliens. The United States government did perform radiation experiments on disabled people at this time, and it did harbour international criminals for its own benefit after the second world war. It also definitely spread misinformation to its own people and agencies. Most of the elements of Redfern’s story are based in fact, and it’s only when they’re put together that they become hard to swallow.

Redfern wrote a follow up to this book a few years ago, but I don’t think I’ll bother with it. The actual message of Body Snatchers in the Desert can be summed up as above, but most of the book is made up of testimony from mysterious insiders. Redfern provides some legitimate looking documentation, but it’s impossible to judge how trustworthy this kind of material is. If the US government was spreading disinformation, I would assume that they would not only cover their tracks by not documenting certain things, but they would also do their best to obfuscate any other information on the topic. Nothing proves anything when it comes to stuff like this, and you can never tell who is lying and what is true. (Not lying doesn’t mean true!) Redfern’s premise sounds like conspiracy theory nonsense, and while I don’t necessarily buy his story, I wouldn’t put it past those bastards at the Pentagon!