The notion of the military
ever voluntarily releasing top secret information has always puzzled me.
As we know that is not in their nature, it does not fit their M.O.
So who would make the colossal blunder of releasing this information to the press?
A naive Col. Blanchard? What, he thought the public had a right to know and didn't bother to check with his bosses first?
Not-very-likely.
The man who actually issued this press release to the public was 1st Lt. Walter Haut -
who in the end, gave us the answer as to whose bright idea it was to issue the press release stating that the Army had 'captured' a Flying Saucer.
Before his death in 2005, he signed a sealed deathbed confession to be opened only after his passing.
Before that time, all he had ever said publicly is the Col. Blanchard called him up one day and dictated the press release to him that he wanted given to all press media.
Which is indeed true, but not the whole truth as we were later to find out.
"On Tuesday morning, July 8, I would attend the regularly scheduled staff meeting at 7:30 a.m.
Besides
Blanchard,
Marcel;
CIC Capt. Sheridan Cavitt;
Col. James I. Hopkins, the operations officer;
Major Patrick Saunders, the base adjutant;
Major Isadore Brown, the personnel officer;
Lt. Col. Ulysses S. Nero, the supply officer;
and from Carswell AAF in Fort Worth, Texas, Blanchard’s boss, Brig. Gen. Roger Ramey
and his chief of staff, Col. Thomas J. DuBose were also in attendance.
...One of the main concerns discussed at the meeting was whether we should go public or not with the discovery.
Gen.Ramey proposed a plan, which I believe originated with his bosses at the Pentagon.
Attention needed to be diverted from the more important site north of town by acknowledging the other location.
Too many civilians were already involved and the press already was informed.
I was not completely informed how this would be accomplished."
So the origin of this idea was actually the Pentagon.
And the primary motivation was -
"Attention needed to be diverted from the more important site north of town by acknowledging the other location.
Too many civilians were already involved and the press already was informed."
Now add to the equation some information that the military had, that not even the President knew -
Not only had we broken the German and Jap secret codes, but the Soviets as well.
The Venona project began in 1943, and through this project the military were well aware of how many Russian spies had infiltrated even the Manhattan project.
The very existence of this program was not revealed until a leak in 1995.
"The decrypted messages gave important insights into Soviet behavior in the period during which duplicate one-time pads were used.
With the first break into the code, Venona revealed the existence of Soviet espionage at Los Alamos National Laboratories.
Identities soon emerged of American, Canadian, Australian, and British spies in service to the Soviet government, including Klaus Fuchs, Alan Nunn May, and Donald Maclean.
Others worked in Washington in the State Department, the Treasury, Office of Strategic Services,and even the White House.
For much of its history, knowledge of Venona was restricted even from the highest levels of government.
Senior army officers, in consultation with the FBI and CIA, made the decision to restrict knowledge of Venona within the government (even the CIA was not made an active partner until 1952).
Army Chief of Staff Omar Bradley, concerned about the White House's history of leaking sensitive information, decided to deny President Truman direct knowledge of the project. The president received the substance of the material only through FBI, Justice Department, and CIA reports on counterintelligence and intelligence matters.
He was not told the material came from decoded Soviet ciphers."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_projectThe Pentagon was also well aware that New Mexico was lousy with civilian Russian spies interested in Los Alamos, White Sands and of course the 509th Atomic Air wing.
Those were undoubtedly the civilians the Pentagon was primarily concerned with 'diverting their attention' as stated by Walter Haut.
So it was the old 'bait and switch ruse' used since the debris field was the only site known to the public at that point, and the military wanted to keep it that way while they recovered and cleaned up the crash site.
And the debris field was already cordoned off.
Once that was accomplished, the weather balloon story was... 'released'.