Edgar Mitchell's testimony at the Washington Press Club

Transcript
Dr. Edgar Mitchell
NPC Washington, D.C.
April 20, 2009

Thank you very much for being here. My story with regard to the disclosure process is very simple. I grew up in Roswell New Mexico, the site of the first UFO crash, the alleged UFO crash, and my story is as a result of growing up there.

I was a senior in high school, just going into my senior year in 1947, when on one day, the Roswell Record announced that an alien craft had crashed and the next day changed that story and said: No, the Air Force says that was a weather balloon. Since I was on my way to college and more interested in those things I didn't pay much attention to it at that point of time.

However, my family was in the agribusiness, my grandfather was a cattle buyer and knew everybody in that area in the Pecos Valley and beyond. He sold cattle into Arizona, Western Texas and was actually known as "Bull Mitchell" in those parts. So it was not surprising to me later on that the lore of the area of our friends and the people in Roswell, including the Sheriff's Department, and the military friends of ours, a major, who was also turned out to be a friend of Jesse Marcel, who was the first Air Force officer on the site of the crash. And this Air Force officer was in administration, he wasn't really involved but he eventually told me his story, and that's how I became involved.

So after my Apollo flight -- I did very little, I knew nothing but the lore of the region until that point -- but after my Apollo flight, when I was back in the area and visiting relatives and friends, some of the people in the area who had been involved, what I call the old-timers, who evolved in the 1940s, 1947, and subsequent with the Roswell Crash and people like in the Sheriff's Department who had been to the crash site and had been supervising traffic, my friend and a friend of my family, the major, who was an office mate in the administrative function at Walker Air Force Base -- these folks, because they had been charged and told not to talk about the experience by military authority in those days, and on dire consequence if they did, felt that and here in the 70s, many many years later, that they didn't want to go to the grave with their story, they wanted to tell somebody reliable.

Being a local boy and having went to the moon they considered me a reliable enough to whisper in my ear that particular story and their association with the Roswell Crash, including the family of the undertaker that provided coffins for the alleged alien victims and others on site who had been involved and knew the story. And of course, eventually I ran into Jesse Marcel Junior, the son of Jesse Marcel, who was the first military officer on the site and knew his story and knew his story well and we became friends in later years and this disclosure movement.

At some point, about 10 years ago I can't remember what date it was right now, when the disclosure movement was going strongly, I came here to Washington with a Navy Commander with name of Wil Miller and Dr. Steven Greer. And we have been able to get an appointment at the Pentagon to talk about what we knew all what we allegedly knew what we thought we knew and went and told our story. And the powers that be at the intelligence committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff listen to a story and said, the admiral said: well I don't know that story, I don't know if that's true but I will find out.

So we departed, went on our way and subsequent learned through Dr. Greer and through Wil Miller that this story have been confirmed and that the admiral had been denied access when he tried to get into the inner workings of that process. And we have confirmation of that, although that admiral now denies the fact that this is the fact. So my story is essentially that. I do have no first-hand experience with the ET effort, except the fact that I know all of these research people that you'll hear from today and those some who are not here today, who have spent a long amount of their entire lives and time doing research into the alien visitation, UFO crashes and so forth.

And I urge that those who are doubtful read the books, read the lore, and start to understand what has really been going on. Because there is no doubt, we are being visited. And as a person who was part of the first generation of being a space-farer of our civilization and having gone to the moon and realizing that I do and many of us to know that have seen the Hubble pictures from space, the universe that we live in is much more wondrous, exciting, complex and far-reaching than we are ever able to know of at this point in time. And the fact we have wondered were we alone in the universe forever, only in our period do we really have evidence, no we are not alone, we are just one planet with intelligent life on it and probably it is time, now that we are space-farers on our planet, that we get active because we are really universal beings.

And in the long stretch of things, if you think about it in the longest possible range, we realize and I realized this from my studies in astronomy and astrophysics, our sun will burn out in due course and we have to be off this planet before if our species is to survive. So anybody, any species, any planet that is not around the mainstream star like ours is, only has the final amount of time on that star before it burns out.

And so our destiny, in my opinion, and we better should get started with it, is become a part of the planetary community of planets, just like when we were much newer on this planet and we found tribes over in the next valley or across the next mountains and started forming communities then in reaching out beyond ourselves at this point in human history on this planet we are now starting and ready should be to reach out beyond our planet and then beyond our solar system to find out what is really going on out there.

In the 20th and 21st century that we now live in, the beginning of the industrial revolution did really didn't take off until the 19th century. And I tell that story to some of my younger audiences, particularly in schools, that my great grandparents went across from South Georgia to West Texas and covered wagons at the end of the Civil War in the 1870s. My family and my father's generation was involved with going off the planet in aircraft. And less than 100 years later I went to the moon. So from covered wagons to going to the moon in less than 100 years is the history of the development of our civilization in not our lifetime, but of a couple of generations. So it's time to start thinking in those terms.

And particularly, since now in the 20th and 21st century we suddenly find that due to our expertise and our genius in science and technology, we have exploded our population from under 2 billion at the beginning of the 20th century to over 6 1/2 billion at this point, and our consumption patterns are clearly indicating that we are utilizing our nonrenewable resources at an unacceptable rate and unsustainable rate. So we've got a lot of thinking to do about what being an advanced civilization really means.

But let's put all that aside for a moment because we're here to talk about disclosure. And what I'm suggesting is that it's now time to put away this embargo of truth about the alien presence. And I call upon our government to open up, like other governments have and you will hear about that this morning, like the Belgians have, the French have, Brazilians have, the Argentines, the Mexicans have all released their files, it's about time now that we do the same thing and become a part of this planetary community that is now trying to take our proper role as a space faring civilization. Thank you very much for your attention.