Jesse Marcel

Jesse Marcel Sr. (1907–1986) was an intelligence officer of the U.S. Army Air Forces and, in 1947, Base Intelligence Officer at the Roswell Army Air Field. That made him the first military officer to investigate the debris field discovered by rancher Mac Brazel on the Foster Ranch, to collect samples of the unusual material and to bring them back to the base. His investigation led to the famous press release about a recovered "flying disc" — a message that shortly afterwards was officially reinterpreted as a weather balloon. Decades later Marcel publicly challenged that weather-balloon explanation and provided the impulse to reopen the entire Roswell case.

• U.S. Army Air Forces intelligence officer (born 1907, died 1986)
• Base Intelligence Officer at the Roswell Army Air Field in 1947
• First military officer to investigate the debris field on the Foster Ranch
• Collected samples of the unusual material and brought them back to the base
• Debris triggered the original press release about a recovered flying disc, later officially explained as a weather balloon
• Stated that the material was unlike anything he had ever seen; called the weather-balloon version a cover story
• Testified to Stanton Friedman in the late 1970s — the starting signal of the modern Roswell investigation

For the UAP timeline, Marcel is the key person of the Roswell case: without his late testimony Stanton Friedman would never have reopened the case in 1978, and without that reopening there would be no central narrative of American ufology, no "cosmic Watergate" formula and probably no trigger for many later disclosure movements. Marcel is the witness from whom everything else first became tellable.