Did the British and American governments routinely cover up information about UFOs? The answer appears to be yes to an extent, anyway. The Ministry of Defence has said that it will start releasing thousands of secret UFO documents it's held, for in some cases, decades. It comes as the most famous UFO incident in America, the alleged crashing of an alien craft at Roswell--celebrates its 60th anniversary with a bizarre new twist. Helene Cacace reports.

Roswell, New Mexico, 1947. It's a time and place that lives forever, well, on some of the wild expanses of the Internet anyway. On the morning of July the 8th, the Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release, claiming they had recovered a crushed flying disk. Later that day, the story changed, and the statement was retracted. Rather than a flying saucer, the Roswell army said they had recovered a weather balloon. A mistake or a cover-up, this week saw the sixtieth anniversary of the incidents, and a celebration showed the continued fascination amongst Ufologists, conspiracy theorists, and the plain weird. And a new dramatic twist in the tale has once again breathed life into the young. Walter Haut was an army press officer at Roswell in 1947. He was the man who told the world that it was only a weather balloon. But after his death last year, he apparently left a sworn affidavit, whose contents have just come to light, in which he says the weather balloon line was just hot air.

It was approximately 12 to 15 feet in length, not quite as wide, about 6 feet high, and more of an egg shape. Lighting was poor, but its surface did appear metallic. No windows, portholes, wings, tail section or landing gear were visible. I was able to see a couple of bodies under a canvas tarpaulin. Only the heads extended beyond the covering, and I was not able to make out any features. But the heads did appear larger than normal, and the contour of canvas suggested the size of a ten-year-old child. I'm convinced that what I personally observed was some kind of craft and its crew from outer space.

Roswell has always been the world's most famous UFO case, and I think whilst this affidavit won't prove that an extraterrestrial spacecraft crashed at Roswell, it will make the, the weather balloon story, perhaps far more open to question, and if Roswell happened, it makes you wonder and think, oh, how many of these other UFO cases are the real thing.

But investigator Mark Pilkington is more skeptical about the discovery. This latest Walter Haut deathbed letter isn't the last word on the story, er, should and certainly shouldn't be considered the Fernando of the Roswell myth; certainly Haut had a very key role(s) of play in the original story as pretty much the person that released it to the world. However, there are a lot of questions being asked about his, this, his physical and mental state at the time of his death.

With the recent release of a large mass of CIA files, known as the Crown Jewels, speculations mounted that a new US president might order the release of more UFO files. And it's not just the other side of the Atlantic in which UFO files from the 40th of president day are being disclosed. The Ministry of Defense inundated by freedom of information requests has decided to release a huge quantity of files relating to UFO reports. The MOD told More4 News that there are so many, it could take three years to make them all available. And if you thought they relate to the UFO-obsessed 40s or 50s, you'd be surprised. Some of them are likely to be from project Condign, a secret UFO investigation which was launched and then after seven years' roundup under Tony Blair's government.

We are gonna find a whole mixture of things. We are going to find some reports on classic UFO cases. Also, we are gonna find some new cases that we haven't heard of before. We will find UFOs reported by pilots and police officers. We will find evidence of UFOs tracked on radar.

Problem is, of course, to the true believers, no amount of dusty files will satisfy. As with Roswell in 1947, there'll always be a dissatisfied conspiracy theorist somewhere.

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1.hot air:(colloq.) pretentious or unsubstantial statements or claims.

2.contour: The outline of a figure, object, topographical feature, etc.

3.whilst:Whilst means the same as the conjunction while. (mainly BRIT, FORMAL or LITERARY)