December 4, 1997: Navy Records - Richard C. Hoagland & Stephen Bassett | Navy Records, Brookings Report, Mars - Chris Ruddy & Ron Brown
Richard C. Hoagland then joins to discuss the Enterprise Mission's ongoing investigation of possible artificial structures on Mars. He explains how the Brookings Report, commissioned by NASA in 1959, recommended withholding any discovery of extraterrestrial artifacts from the public. Hoagland also addresses the Mars Surveyor spacecraft's delayed aerobraking, questioning NASA's claim that the Martian atmosphere inexplicably doubled in density.
Stephen Bassett appears on behalf of Dr. Steven M. Greer to discuss government secrecy around UFO records, while geologist Ron Nicks presents his analysis of Pathfinder imagery suggesting the lander touched down amid the ruins of an ancient constructed environment.
Key Moments
Cogswell named: .45-caliber hole in Ron Brown's head: Ruddy quotes Lt. Col. Steve Cogswell, deputy medical examiner at the military pathology lab, saying that even given an accidental crash, the apparent homicide on Brown's body should have brought the investigation to a screeching halt; Ruddy says he has photographs of a perfectly circular .45-caliber hole on the top of Brown's head and x-rays showing brain fragments consistent with a bullet breaking up.
Why a perfectly circular hole points to a bullet, not debris: Ruddy walks through Cogswell's forensic logic: in over 100 plane crashes Cogswell has seen, debris flying through a body at the 150-mph crash speed leaves jagged edges, not perfect circles; a perfectly round entrance is typical of a high-velocity bullet, which is why Cogswell calls it an apparent gunshot wound to the head.
Hoagland on the 1960 Brookings Report: Hoagland and Bassett walk through the 1960 Brookings Report - a private think-tank study NASA commissioned that recommended withholding the discovery of extraterrestrial artifacts from the public, and which Hoagland argues colored official policy on Mars and Cydonia ever since.
Brown's x-rays were destroyed: Bell summarizes the most damning piece of Ruddy's reporting: that the x-rays of Ron Brown's head - the only way to confirm or refute the bullet-fragment claim - have been destroyed, and without that destruction the country would never even be discussing the possibility of murder.