Donald Schmitt

Donald Schmitt is an American UFO researcher, author, and investigator who has dedicated over three decades to the study of the Roswell incident and related crash retrieval cases. He served as Director of Special Investigations for the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) under its founder, J. Allen Hynek, and has co-authored seven books on the Roswell case with researchers including Kevin Randle and Tom Carey. He is also lead investigator at the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, New Mexico.

Background and entry into research

Schmitt describes himself as a total skeptic until 1989, when he made his first investigative trip to New Mexico expecting to resolve the Roswell matter in a single weekend. He traces his interest in crash retrieval cases to J. Allen Hynek, who — despite resisting the concept during his lifetime due to doubts about interstellar travel distances — was privately earmarking crash retrieval witness interviews for follow-up at the time of his death in 1986. Schmitt also credits Leonard Stringfield, who coined the term "crash retrieval" at the 1978 MUFON conference in Dayton, Ohio — directly adjacent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — as the pioneer who established crash retrieval research as a legitimate field.

Roswell investigation

Main article:

1947 Roswell incident

Schmitt has led six archaeological digs at the purported Roswell debris field and compiled testimony from over 600 witnesses, military and civilian, whom he says all described the same event in consistent detail — a consistency he argues would be sufficient to prevail in a court of law. His findings include the Walter Haut posthumous affidavit (which Schmitt helped arrange), testimony from General Arthur Exon on the transfer of materials to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, deathbed testimony from Operation Paperclip scientists regarding their examination of the wreckage, and accounts from employees at Boeing, Lockheed, the Battelle Institute, RAND Corporation, and other contractors describing independent reverse-engineering efforts. For the full account of these findings, see 1947 Roswell incident and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

The Randle–Schmitt reconstruction

The pair's distinguishing claims were chronological and geographic. They placed the recovery of bodies late on 8 July rather than 3 July, and reconstructed the debris field and impact site as a specific configuration rather than a single location. Their account of the first day has Jesse Marcel and Sheridan Cavitt examining, collecting and loading material into two vehicles before Marcel recommended a full recovery operation requiring fifty to sixty troops.

That reconstruction is one of the competing frameworks, set against Stanton Friedman and Don Berliner's Crash at Corona, the earlier Charles Berlitz–William Moore treatment, and the skeptical analyses of Kal Korff and Karl Pflock.

Schmitt's position and Randle's have diverged since, and "Randle–Schmitt" should not be read as a single continuing view: Randle subsequently withdrew support from several witnesses the joint books relied on, while Schmitt has continued the line of investigation in his later work.

Documentary contributions

Two of Schmitt's specific findings recur because they concern the documentary record rather than witness memory:

The Mogul wind-trajectory data. Schmitt documents that Charles Moore later reversed his own position at the Air Force's request, assembling wind-trajectory figures drawn from other flights in order to place a specific Project Mogul launch where the debris was found.
The Haut household. Cover-Up at Roswell records that Walter Haut's wife Lorraine received repeated telephone threats over nearly thirty years.

He also recorded a remark made to him personally by General Wesley Clark in December 2014, that if the government "had any answers [about Roswell] I'm sure they would have told him while he was in the White House" — the "him" being Bill Clinton, whom Clark served under.

Books

His 2007 book Witness to Roswell (co-authored with Thomas J. Carey) organized firsthand testimonies chronologically to allow the witnesses themselves to narrate events, with a 75th anniversary edition released in 2022. His 2020 book Roswell: The Ultimate Cold Case (also with Carey) presented the case in the format of a legal proceeding, with sworn affidavits, video depositions, and deathbed confessions organized as opening arguments and evidence.

Collaboration with Tom Carey

From May 1998, Schmitt partnered with Tom Carey, an anthropologist by training who had previously worked with Kevin Randle on the Roswell case through the early 1990s. The Schmitt–Carey team has co-authored seven books on Roswell and Wright-Patterson over more than 27 years and organized the most comprehensive post-1994 witness interview database on the event. Carey described the collaboration as assembling a "jigsaw puzzle" from hundreds of partial testimonies — each witness knowing only their own piece of the event — into a coherent timeline: "Everyone only knew their own little snippet of what they knew about the case. It's been our task to put those like a jigsaw puzzle, to put those little snippets together into a timeline jigsaw puzzle that makes sense."

Congressional advocacy

From 2023, Schmitt has served as an adviser to members of Congress drafting legislation related to UAP whistleblower testimony. He draws a distinction between David Grusch — whom he characterizes as a second-hand reporter rather than a true firsthand whistleblower — and the approximately ten individuals whose names Grusch reportedly provided to a congressional committee in closed session, who Schmitt argues are the ones who should be subpoenaed.

Open questions

References

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