Sheridan W. Cavitt

Sheridan W. Cavitt was an officer in the Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) assigned to Roswell Army Air Field in July 1947. The Army's own historical account, published on DVIDS, identifies him as "Lt. Col. Sheridan W. Cavitt," commander of the Roswell office of the 700th Air CIC Detachment, and places him at the ranch of rancher William "Mac" Brazel with Major Jesse Marcel and Master Sergeant Lewis Rickett on 7 July 1947, where, the article says, the team collected "numerous pieces" of material. Army history article on Roswell

His significance comes less from 1947 than from the decades of interviews that followed. Cavitt is one of the few named participants who is documented as having been on the site and who was still alive to be questioned by researchers. That made him a key witness in the 1990s, when the Roswell story was being rebuilt around surviving memories and in the Air Force's own reviews.

What he said in 1947 and the 1990s

Cavitt's public statements have been inconsistent, and most of the disagreement concerns whether he went to the debris field at all. In a sworn statement dated 24 May 1994, as excerpted by a fan-hosted transcript that cites the 1995 Air Force report, he describes going out with Rickett and Marcel and seeing light, thin square sticks resembling bamboo, and a reflective material he compared to foil. Extract of the 1994 statement and interview He said the material was "consistent with a weather balloon" and that it was too flimsy to carry anyone. In the same extract he says he told Rickett not to mention the find to headquarters, because the team had already wasted time on a balloon.

The Army history quotes Cavitt as saying, "I don't think I even made a report" to headquarters, which the article presents as in tension with Marcel's account.

Kevin Randle, who interviewed Cavitt and co-wrote the early Roswell books with Donald Schmitt, has argued the record contradicts itself. In a 2025 blog post, Randle says Cavitt told him he "wasn't even in Roswell at the time" and was "too busy with security investigations to be chasing weather balloons," and he cites a December 1989 letter from Cavitt to Doyle Rees that appears to say Cavitt had not been at the site. Randle on Cavitt and Project Mogul Randle rejects the Air Force's Project Mogul explanation for the debris, which he argues cannot account for the Flight No. 4 timeline.

The Air Force explanation

The U.S. Air Force's 1994 and 1995 reports, The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert, used Cavitt's recollection as evidence that the debris was consistent with a balloon from Project Mogul, a classified program that used high-altitude balloon trains with radar targets. Officers Marcel, Cavitt and Blanchard did not know of Mogul, which the report attributes to the program's compartmentalized, need-to-know structure. The report's position is that Cavitt's testimony supports a mundane explanation. Critics reply that the same testimony is too inconsistent to settle the question.

Why it matters

Cavitt's case shows how Roswell testimony is hard to evaluate. The existence of a CIC officer at the debris site is well documented in official Army history, and his rank and unit are not seriously disputed. What remains contested is what he saw, what he reported, and whether his later accounts reflect memory or the pressures of a decades-old controversy. Researchers on every side cite him, and no single account of his statements has been confirmed against the original tape or the full sworn document in a source this entry could verify.

He should be read as a witness whose role is well documented but whose testimony is unresolved. The debate over his statements is a useful example of the methodological problems in Roswell scholarship generally: many witnesses gave accounts decades later, after their stories had been shaped by books, television and each other.