There are apparently those who also feel that by reversing my position on Roswell I am dropping the ball and letting down the twenty thousand plus individuals who have signed the Roswell Declaration. That is anything but the case.
First, with regard to reversing my stance, it is important to remember that the objective of the Roswell Initiative has been to find the truth, not define it. Unfortunately, the truth turned out to be different from what I thought it might be, or hoped it would be. However, now that I am absolutely certain that the debris recovered from Roswell was not that from an extraterrestrial craft, I feel an obligation to get that information out as well. Not to do so would be less than forthright and less than honest.
Secondly, as for the Roswell Declarations, the plan is to deliver them to the White House, along with a cover letter to the President, during the week of the 50th anniversary of the Roswell event this July. Whether or not the government has any substantive information on UFOs, from a public relations standpoint, the situation has not been handled well. The government's quasi-official policy over the last few decades of ignoring the UFO issue has led to a definite suspicion on the part of its citizenry. A 1996 Gallup pole revealed that 71 percent of the American public believes that "the U.S. Government knows more about UFOs than they are telling us."
Although the Roswell Declaration was inspired by the 1947 Roswell event, it is by no means tied to it. The Declaration requests "an Executive Order declassifying any information regarding the existence of UFOs or extraterrestrial intelligence." Such an assurance would still be timely, appropriate, and beneficial to both the U.S. government and its people.
As is stated in the Declaration, if no information is being withheld, such an action would, nonetheless, have the positive effect of setting the record straight and clearing up years of suspicion and controversy. On the other hand, if information is actually being withheld, it would represent knowl dge of profound importance to which we are all entitled, and its release would be acknowledged as an historic act of honesty and goodwill.