Roswell: Communicating Fact and
Fiction in Popular Culture
In recent decades the American people have become more cynical about,
and more skeptical of, official government statements, and the elected officials’
honorable intentions. Thanks to Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair, former
President Clinton’s various scandals, the Bush administration’s assertions of
“weapons of mass destruction” as a justification for pre-emptive war, and
general comments from officials regarding the outcome in Iraq the public may
have good reason to be suspicious—and even a little paranoid—of the
government and the military. Scandals, cover-ups, and even conspiracies, no
longer shock the jaded American public.
This brings us to what some conspiracy buffs allege, and much of popular
culture assumes, to be the greatest conspiracy and cover-up in American history:
the Roswell %