I remember the crazy fiasco that unfolded in 1993-95 when Representative Steven H. Schiff, NM, decided to look into the Roswell incident by requesting the Air Force records from that time period.
First he asked the Air Force to declassify and provide him with all of the official material from the incident, but instead they referred him to the National Archives, which he took as an insulting brush-off, because it was. The National Archives promptly told him that they had nothing. So Schiff filed a formal request with the General Accounting Office (GAO), which is the investigative arm of Congress. Then suddenly the Air Force had records after all – that’s when the Project Mogul story came out, in lieu of any actual records from the base dating from the time period in question, which the Air Force claimed had been destroyed without proper authority. But of course whenever military records become classified, they respond to requests for them by saying that they’re destroyed/nonexistent.
Even the Washington Post reported that the GAO believed that the Air Force was lying:
“Investigators at the General Accounting Office are quietly skeptical about whether the Air Force told the truth when responding to a controversial request for information by a member of Congress in 1993.”
ROSWELL INCIDENT' REVISITS AIR FORCE
That whole article is fascinating, by the way.
Eighteen months earlier, Schiff had said this, in another Washington Post article about his efforts to get records about the Roswell incident:
"'Generally, I'm a skeptic on UFOs and alien beings, but there are indications from the runaround that I got that whatever it was, it wasn't a balloon. Apparently, it's another government coverup,' Schiff said."
GAO TURNS TO ALIEN TURF IN PROBE
Schiff issued a press release about his frustrations with the Air Force regarding his request for Roswell documents:
PROJECT 1947 - Congressman Schiff's GAO/Roswell Press Release
The whole thing was a disaster – the Air Force couldn’t have fanned the flames of suspicion any harder if they’d tried. First they lie to a Congressman and deny the existence of any records. Then they claim that the records were destroyed but they can’t explain why they were destroyed. Then they suddenly offer a new explanation in the form of Project Mogul. Then the Washington Post reports that the GAO thinks they’re lying. If you wanted to make people think that there’s a cover-up, that’s like a manual on how to do it.
Three years later
Schiff died from an aggressive form of skin cancer at the age of 51. And even that seems suspicious in light of
other tragic cancer deaths of UFO researchers, and the
widely known allegations that the CIA had developed cancer-causing assassination tools back in the 60s.