ALBUQUERQUE - The man made famous for issuing a news release that said a flying saucer landed in Roswell has died.

Army Lt. Walter Haut, a former spokesman for the Roswell Army Air Field, died Thursday in Roswell, his daughter, Julie Shuster, said. He was 83.

Haut listened closely on July 8, 1947 as base commander Col. William Blanchard dictated a news release about a recovered flying saucer and ordered Haut to issue it.

The Roswell Daily Record newspaper ran a bold headline July 9, 1947: "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer on Ranch in Roswell Region."

The same day, a statement was released saying it was only a weather balloon.

"I guess they changed their mind," Haut told The Associated Press in 1997.

Haut said he never was told exactly where the flying disc reported in his news release was found nor did he, himself, ever see a UFO.

But he remained a believer.

"There must have been something in the skies at that time," he said. "There's just too much evidence."

Haut and two other men founded The International UFO Museum in 1991 where he was president until 1996. More than 2 1/2 million people have visited the museum since it opened in 1992, Shuster said.

It wasn't until the late 1980s that Shuster said she and her sister learned about the flying saucer incident, not from their father but from a book.

"It was not a topic of conversation at the dinner table for anybody involved," she said.

Haut, born June 3, 1922, in Chicago is survived by his two daughters, Shuster and Marabeth Fields of Roswell, three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren..

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By ASSOCIATED PRESS-December 18, 2005

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