Stanton Friedman began investigating the Roswell incident in 1978 when he tracked down Jesse Marcel, the Army Air Force intelligence officer who had handled the debris recovered from a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico in July 1947. Marcel told Friedman the material was unlike anything he had ever seen.
What followed was four decades of systematic investigation. Friedman conducted more than 700 witness interviews. He obtained classified documents through FOIA requests that established the existence of MJ-12, the alleged secret committee established by President Truman to manage UAP-related information.
Friedman's central thesis was straightforward: some UFOs are intelligently controlled craft of extraterrestrial origin, and governments have known this since at least 1947 and have maintained the secret through compartmentalization, ridicule, and active disinformation.
He died in May 2019, never having received government confirmation. Grusch's 2023 testimony arrived four years too late for Friedman to witness it. Those who knew him noted he would have been unsurprised.