Something seemed very strange about all of this to Grant. They then got into a jeep and began driving, seemingly on a "wild goose chase." But they never located a thing! No meteor, nothing. Allan could not understand why they could not find it, and the Major was oddly being of little help in trying to understand why this was so.
But we learn from Allan's widow Karin Grant that there was a reason for this strange scenario having played out in the desert those many years ago. She and her husband discussed his strange flight to New Mexico for many years after. Both had agreed that there were one of three reasons why Allan was taken out there-
1) Allan said, "Of course we never found the big "meteor' and I wonder whether or not we had arrived too early or too late."
2) He also thought that "perhaps we landed in the wrong place."
3) Ultimately though, the Grants decided that the best explanation was that "the government knew all along that there was something more than a meteor that had crashed- and what better way to deal with it than to "invite" the prestigious Life magazine to come take a look."
Grant's widow continues, "You take them someplace near -but not exactly to- the spot. Show the world there's nothing there- and everybody is happy and relieved, and you can go about your business." She believes that "perhaps they thought you could keep other media out of there if need be by saying that Life has already been there, and they found nothing." And she was right- no mainstream media reported on the event after the first wire stories based on military press releases.
Before Allan died, he told Karin that he always believed that he was "used" by the military as a "potential cover" to in some way obfuscate something. He told her that the "something" what he had always thought -even at the time- was much bigger- an unidentified flying object.
So incensed was Allan about the event -and the Air Force's 1990's reports that explained away the crash as that of a balloon crash and dummy drop- that he felt compelled to write to the LA Times. It was after he read the Air Force Roswell reports that he knew they were lying. It was then that he got the sinking, knowing feeling that Roswell was real. It was a UFO that had crashed to the desert floor decades ago.
This author decided to see if there ever was a "Major Charles Phillips" as alluded to by Grant. If so, what things was this Major associated with during his years of service in the Air Force? The answer was found in reviewing the records of the now-defunct civilian UFO organization NICAP.
Incredibly, Major Phillips -just one month after the Roswell crash- would become one of the US Air Force's first official UFO researchers! Phillips teamed with famed astronomer Dr. Lincoln LaPaz from the University of New Mexico. Together they would lead what they termed "ground survey teams" to investigate the mysterious -and still unexplained- "Green Fireball" sightings that plagued New Mexico for the next several years!
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