Few things in American history are as controversial as Roswell. The one undeniable fact is that something happened near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947, but beyond that, the facts become murky as memories and evidence lose their luster over the years. That said, the impact of an unidentified object continues to mystify residents, visitors and the curious, and it has not only put Roswell on the map but has kept it there for thousands of tourists.

While much of the information disseminated has been in the form of press releases published in newspapers, the FBI eventually relented and released their records involving the Roswell crash. In 2011, more than 2,000 individual documents about this event were scanned and published as the digital project "The Vault", part of nearly 7,000 items on various subjects in the Freedom of Information Act's Library.

Nonetheless, skepticism about the official version of the incident prevails, and a countless number of people continue to believe the American government covered up a crash landing by aliens. As John B. Alexander, PhD, a former project manager at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and consultant to the CIA, put it, "Attempting to come to any complete resolution of the incident is a fool's errand, as whatever the truth may have been has become so distorted over time that facts have merged inextricably with fiction."

But fools did abound. The FBI, and anyone else who might have archived top secret memos, reports, or even newspaper clippings, were barraged for years with Freedom of Information requests. When the FBI finally complied with thousands and thousands of pages freely disseminated online, they were still accused of withholding or altering the facts.