Jesse Marcel Sr.

Jesse Marcel Sr. was the intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell Army Air Field who recovered debris from a ranch northwest of Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947. He was the first military officer to handle the material, which he initially described as unlike anything he had seen before.

Marcel accompanied rancher Mac Brazel to the debris field and collected samples, which were subsequently transported to Fort Worth, Texas, where Brigadier General Roger Ramey announced the material was a weather balloon. Marcel was photographed at Ramey's office holding debris that researchers have long debated: whether the material in the photographs was the same material recovered from the field, or whether a substitution was made for the press.

Marcel served in the Army Air Forces during World War II, receiving commendations for intelligence work in the Pacific theatre. After Roswell, he continued military service and retired from the reserves.

In 1978, Marcel told researcher Stanton Friedman that the weather balloon explanation was a cover story and that the actual debris had unusual properties, including metallic material that could not be bent or burned. This interview, and subsequent ones with other media, reignited interest in the Roswell incident after three decades of obscurity. Marcel's testimony became the foundation of the modern Roswell controversy. He died in 1986, before the case attracted its widest public attention in the 1990s.