To my way of thinking, the fact that the US Army did write and release that statement solidifies the Roswell Incident as being true, and that they did in fact recover a flying disc of unknown origin. All of the actions that follow it indicate a cover-up of that original statement. Otherwise, why wouldn't the Army have trotted out the soldier who wrote up the press release and have him make a statement claiming it was a mistake, joke, or otherwise? Why go to the trouble of having Major Marcel get photographed with the balloon wreckage? It seems to me that if the report of a "flying disc" was completely erroneous and released on accident (which, again, I don't see happening given the Army's oversight) then there were easier ways of explaining away the subject--especially since they were the originators of the tale.