Walter Haut, 83, Informed Press of Roswell UFO

The man made famous for issuing a news release that said a flying saucer landed in Roswell has died.Army Lieutenant Walter Haut, a former spokesman for the Roswell Army Air Field, died Thursday in Roswell, his daughter, Julie Shuster, said. He was 83.Haut listened closely on July 8, 1947 as base commander Colonel William Blanchard dictated a news release about a recovered flying saucer and ordered Haut to issue it.“The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment group at Roswell Army Air Field announced at noon today that the field has come into possession of a flying saucer,” his release read.The Roswell Daily Record newspaper ran a bold headline July 9, 1947: “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region.”The same day, a corrected statement was released saying it was only a weather balloon. Remains of of accident shown to the press were indeed those of a weather balloon, but controversy over whether other detritus was hidden away persisted for decades.“I guess they changed their mind,” Haut told the Associated Press in 1997.Haut said he never was told exactly where the flying disc reported in his news release was found nor did he, himself, ever see a UFO.But he remained a believer.“There must have been something in the skies at that time,” he said. “There’s just too much evidence.”Haut and two other men founded the International UFO Museum in 1991 where he was president until 1996. More than 2 1/2 million people have visited the museum since it opened in 1992, Ms. Shuster said.It wasn’t until the late 1980s that Ms. Shuster said she and her sister learned about the flying saucer incident, not from their father but from a book.“It was not a topic of conversation at the dinner table for anybody involved,” she said.

Walter Haut, 83, Informed Press of Roswell UFO

Walter Haut, 83, Informed Press of Roswell UFO

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