Overview
Representative Steven Schiff asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the reporting requirements and government records concerning the 1947 Roswell recovery. The resulting report, issued on 28 July 1995, described a search across military, intelligence and other federal holdings. It found two records originating in 1947 which referred to the incident, along with evidence that some Roswell Army Air Field record groups had been destroyed.
The report is an archival investigation. Its findings concern surviving documents, retention requirements and the scope of a search. They are relevant to the Roswell case without constituting a fresh laboratory identification of the recovered debris.
Chronology
March 1994–June 1995 GAO conducts its review and queries federal agencies.
July 1994 The Air Force issues its own Roswell research report during the GAO inquiry.
March–May 1995 CIA conducts a specifically requested Roswell database search.
28 July 1995 GAO issues report NSIAD-95-187 to Schiff.
What the investigators searched
GAO examined classified and unclassified records from July 1947 into the 1950s, including unit histories, intelligence correspondence, message traffic and accident records. Its methodology table names the repositories and record categories. This makes the report more useful than a general assurance that government files had been checked: subsequent researchers can compare a proposed new search with the categories actually covered.
The inquiry also asked agencies for their own records. CIA initially could not assure GAO that an earlier general UFO search had specifically covered Roswell, so it undertook a further database search. GAO records the subsequent negative response. Its methodology states that written agency responses were not independently verified. A repository examination and an agency’s answer to a query therefore have different evidential roles.
The destroyed records and the missing authority
The identified losses included general administrative records covering March 1945–December 1949 and outgoing messages covering October 1946–December 1949. The disposition documentation did not identify who destroyed them, when, or under which authority. These are meaningful gaps in the surviving administrative history.
The National Personnel Records Center’s chief archivist also told GAO that omission of a disposal-authority citation occurred in other Air Force organisational records from the period. GAO’s examination of other control forms supported that observation. The report consequently does not establish that the Roswell groups were selectively destroyed to conceal a recovery. It establishes a loss whose precise disposal history was inadequately recorded.
The two 1947 references
The combined 509th Bomb Group and base history recorded the public-information work generated by a reported flying disc and stated that it turned out to be a radar-tracking balloon. The 8 July FBI teletype relayed military information about a balloon and reflector and mentioned a transfer to Wright Field. Both are contemporaneous institutional records, although neither is an item-by-item examination of the debris.
GAO followed the Wright Field reference into Air Materiel Command records and found no mention of an examination of Roswell debris. That negative result does not itself show that a transfer never happened. It identifies a specific unfilled documentary link between the reported destination and the searched holdings.
Why the accident-report question has limits
Army regulations required permanent retention of aircraft accident reports. GAO found four New Mexico military aircraft accidents in July 1947, all later than the 8 July announcement. Air Force records officials said a weather-balloon crash did not require the same report. The searched accident records also excluded categories such as most balloons and civilian or other-agency vehicles.
An absent aircraft accident report therefore cannot distinguish every proposed explanation. Its significance depends on whether the event would have fallen within the reporting system in the first place. Treating the absence as decisive evidence either for a balloon or for concealed exotic wreckage would give the record category more reach than the methodology permits.
Evidence assessment
GAO made the Roswell records question more specific. It documented surviving contemporary references, identified particular destroyed groups and disclosed the institutions and categories searched. The report gives researchers a basis for locating an actual archival gap instead of treating all missing information as one undifferentiated absence.
Its findings are compatible with the contemporary balloon account and do not supply an authenticated record of an extraordinary vehicle. They also do not certify that every potentially relevant document survived or was discovered. Any later claim of a newly found Roswell record should be tested for provenance and compared with this search scope; the existence of gaps is a reason for that work, rather than evidence of the proposed document’s contents.
Source library
GAO/NSIAD-95-187: Government Records
Primary report, including the search-methodology table and appended contemporary records and agency responses. It expressly distinguishes direct review from unverified written agency replies. Read source
GAO report catalogue and issue date
The publisher’s record establishes the 28 July 1995 issue date and commission. It is an access record for the same investigation, not an independent corroborating study. Read source