A former British Ministry of Defense (MOD) UFO investigator, Nick Pope, suggests the U.S. government is still withholding classified information about the Roswell, New Mexico, incident, according to Express.co.uk.

Speaking to reporters Saturday about the Roswell crash, Pope said, "I think there's a misconception that it was somehow the media or the public that broke this story. That's not true.

"It was the U.S. military themselves who said, 'We have recovered a flying disc.' Now they changed this story within 24 hours and said it was just a weather balloon.

"But the fact that we're still talking about this nearly 80 years after the event shows the enduring power of this mystery."

In July 1947, the U.S. military announced the discovery of a crashed flying saucer near Roswell but retracted the statement, claiming it was a damaged weather balloon. This led to ongoing speculation and theories about a cover-up, with claims of alien bodies being transported to the secretive Area 51 base in Nevada.

Pope, who investigated UFO phenomena for the MOD, believes modern scientific techniques should be applied to UFO research, as in the case of Roswell.

"I think the fact is that in these days of forensic analysis and, you know, DNA and things like that, we can do this sort of scientific investigation. This was not just people saying they saw lights in the sky.

"People said that something crashed. So you can get boots on the ground. You can forensically examine the landing site and hopefully recover debris. There is still so much to be done in Roswell," Pope said.

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