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ROUND ROCK, Texas — If he wins his bid for the White House, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson might be just the man to get to the bottom of the 60-year-old Roswell UFO mystery.

Answering questions at a town hall meeting Friday, a man asked Richardson about the 1947 incident in which many people still believe a flying saucer landed near the eastern New Mexico town.

"I've been in government a long time; I've been in the Cabinet; I've been in the Congress; and I've always felt that the government doesn't tell the truth as much as it should on a lot of issues," said Richardson.

"When I was in Congress, I said (to the) Department of Defense . . . `What is the data? What is the data you have?' "

He was told the records were classified.

"That ticked me off," he said, as the crowd laughed.

"What do you want me to do? You want me to open up all those files?" he asked the alien enthusiast, who answered that he did.

"I'll work with you on that."

Roswell has become a mecca for conspiracy theorists in the years since a July 8, 1947, press release sent from Roswell Army Air Base disclosed the recovery of "a flying disk" at a ranch near Roswell.

The next day, higher-ranking officers said the debris came from a weather balloon that crashed; authorities displayed some bits and pieces.

More than 30 years passed, and the incident was generally forgotten. But then, an Army officer who took part in the recovery of the debris came forward to assert that it had been from an alien spacecraft, and that the government had engaged in a cover-up.

Eventually, the Air Force disclosed it had been part of Project Mogul, a top-secret effort to monitor Soviet-era nuclear testing. But that story never satisfied believers who advanced tales of alien bodies recovered in the desert.