Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Aliens at Roswell and the hearsay rule
Glenn Reynolds links to one of several recent blog posts about the "deathbed confession" of Lieutenant Walter Haut, the public relations officer at the Roswell Army Air Field.
Lieutenant Walter Haut was the public relations officer at the base in 1947 and was the man who issued the original and subsequent press releases after the crash on the orders of the base commander, Colonel William Blanchard.
Haut died last year but left a sworn affidavit to be opened only after his death.
Last week, the text was released and asserts that the weather balloon claim was a cover story and that the real object had been recovered by the military and stored in a hangar.
He described seeing not just the craft, but alien bodies.
On the one hand, aliens? On the other hand, "dying declarations" are thought to be more credible than other forms of hearsay statements, so much so that they have long been carved out as an exception to the "hearsay rule," which prohibits out-of-court statements offered in evidence of the truth of the matter asserted.
So, do you believe in aliens at Roswell and hundreds of years of common law tradition, or in neither? You can't have it both ways!
7 Comments:
By 
, at
Tue Jul 03, 10:53:00 AM:
If he left a sworn affidavit to be openned after his death then it was not a "dying declaration".
By 
TigerHawk, at
Tue Jul 03, 02:20:00 PM:
Yeah, I was waiting for somebody to make that point and do away with all my fun. It depends how close he was to dying when he swore out the affidavit!
By RebeccaH, at
Tue Jul 03, 04:51:00 PM:
I know what your question is, but I believe it is possible to confess something on your deathbed and believe it's the truth, and be mistaken.
If his words were correctly transcribed (sorry, don't have the link), he said he saw what he thought were bodies from a distance (ashen-colored) lying on the ground, partially covered by a tarp. To me, that's as good a description of test crash dummies as any.
By Ray, at
Tue Jul 03, 08:49:00 PM:
The personality of Mr. Haut matters -- a lot. Military personnel have occasionally been known to play jokes on conspiracy-minded people, from time to time.
If Mr. Haut was a practical joker, think of this as his last joke.
By , at
Wed Jul 04, 01:00:00 AM:
CONSERVATIVES ARE FROM MARS ENVIROMENTALISTS WACKOS ARE FROM AREA 51
By Pax Federatica, at
Wed Jul 04, 01:03:00 AM:
As Rebecca noted above, Lt. Haut may have been mistaken in his affidavit. I might add that he may even have been purposefully deceived.
The most plausible explanation I've seen for the Roswell incident is that it involved not aliens, but Soviet spies whose vehicle crashed - or was spotted and shot down - in New Mexico. As this theory goes, the Feds did not want this to become public knowledge for obvious diplomatic/geopolitical reasons, so they concocted the space aliens rumor, and surreptitiously encouraged its propagation, as a second layer of disinformation beneath the official cover story. (This is of a piece with the theory that Castro's Cuba was behind the JFK assassination, which was then covered up for equally obvious diplomatic/geopolitical reasons.)
If true, this tactic has worked stupendously well. Even if the Feds were to acknowledge tomorrow that the Roswell "aliens" were in fact merely Russkies, no doubt the believers in the alien theory would immediately dismiss it out of hand as just another cover-up of the "real" truth.
By , at
Wed Jul 04, 10:55:00 AM:
In my experience Public Relations officers are rarely eye-witnesses to anything. They usually create official statements based on reports that have been submitted by those actually involved in whatever events are being covered.
Josh: It's possible that Soviet spies were trying to get intelligence on Roswell from the air and crashed. However, in 1947 renting or otherwise obtaining a small aircraft to fly around New Mexico probably would have drawn some attention. And to make a point, Soviet spies certainly might have been aliens in the sense that they were not Americans recruited as spies.
