The secret diary of a US intelligence officer has been revealed, reviving research into the Roswell incident that took place more than 70 years ago.

New clues revealed about the 1947 Roswell UFO incident – 1
Major Jesse Marcel, an intelligence officer at Roswell Army Airfield, investigated and recovered some of the debris from the Roswell UFO site in 1947
When a mysterious object crashed in the desert near the Roswell Army Airfield (RAAF) in July 1947, Major Jesse Marcel, an RAAF intelligence officer, was sent to oversee the recovery of the debris.

Until recently, an army official revealed that the RAAF officers had found a weather balloon, not a flying saucer.

Photos released for the first time show Marcel posing with pieces of what appears to be a weather balloon. But in the decades since, many have speculated about the military’s original “flying saucer” report and wondered if the wreckage was unusual.

Marcel’s family revealed that he kept a diary from that period that may contain clues about the Roswell incident, sparking a new investigation.

“The government claimed they found a UFO and they had a press release about it,” said Ben Smith, a former CIA operative and lead investigator on the program.

With this new information, Smith said, authorities will reinvestigate the Roswell crash site, combining aerial surveys and mapping, and using research imagery to detect microscopic depressions in the ground that could indicate where the debris landed.

But the central piece of the new investigation is a journal that Marcel is believed to have kept during the Roswell crash, now in the possession of his grandchildren.

Decades after the Roswell incident, Marcel believed that the object that crashed in the New Mexico desert was of extraterrestrial origin.

Now, researchers are hoping that analysis of the journal and its cryptic translations could reveal new messages.