Part 19 (2/2)
About ten o'clock in the evening he and two other people were standing near the edge of his yard talking; he happened to be facing south, looking off across the countryside He digressed a bit from his story to explain that his ho south, he had a view of the entire countryside
While he was talking to the two other people he noticed a light approaching from the west He had assumed it was an airplane and had casually watched it, but when the light got fairly close, the CIA man said that he suddenly realized there wasn't any sound associated with it If it were an airplane it would have been close enough for hiuests' conversations He had actually quit talking and was looking at the light when it stopped for an instant and began to cliuests, and they looked up just in tiht finish its climb, stop, and level out They all watched it travel level for a few seconds, then go into a nearly vertical dive, level out, and streak off to the east
Most everyone at the party had seen the light before it disappeared, and within uments as to what it was had developed, I was told One person thought it was a lighted balloon, and a retired general thought it was an airplane To settle the arguht add that these people were such that the ot quick results Radar in the Washi+ngton area said that there had been no airplanes flying west to east south of Alexandria in the past hour The weather station at Bolling AFB said that there were no balloons in the area, but as a double check the weather people looked at their records of high-altitude winds It couldn't have been a balloon because none of the winds up to 65,000 feet were blowing froht on a balloon, it has to be well below 65,000 feet; the man from CIA told me that they had even considered the possibility that the UFO was a meteor and that the ”jump” had been due to soht had been in sight too long to be a uests had also seen the light jump
There wasn'tto the uests had already made all of the checks that I'd have o back to Dayton, write up his report, and stamp it ”Unknown”
Back in March, when it had beco its interest in UFO's, I had suggested that Project Blue Book subscribe to a newspaper clipping service Such a service could provide several things First, it would show us exactly howsaid, and it would give us the feel of the situation Then it would also provide a lot of data for our files In o to the Air Force Newspaper reporters rival any intelligence officer when it co up facts, and there was always the possibility that they would uncover and print so we'd missed This was especially true in the few cases of hoaxes that always accompany UFO publicity Last, it would provide us with material on which to base a study of the effect of newspaper publicity upon the number and type of UFO reports
Colonel Dunn liked the idea of the clipping service, and it went into effect soon after the first publicity had appeared Every three or four days ould get an envelope full of clippings In March the clipping service was sending the clippings to us in letter-sized envelopes The envelopes were thin--s in each one Then they began to get thicker and thicker, until the people ere doing the clipping switched to using et thicker and thicker By May ere up to old shoe boxes The majority of the newspaper stories in the shoe boxes were based on material that had come from ATIC
All of these inquiries fro to Blue Book's work load and to my problems Normally a military unit such as ATIC has its own public infor quoted quite freely in the press and was repeatedly being snarled at by soon It was almost a daily occurrence to have people fronantly ask, ”Why did you tell them that?” They usually referred to some bit of information that soave up and coested that any contacts with the press be on These people were trained and paid to do this job; I wasn't Colonel Dunn heartily agreed because every tiot a dirty look
Colonel Dunn called General Saht in General Sory Smith of the Department of Defense, Office of Public Information General Smith appointed a civilian on the Air Force Press Desk, Al Chop, to handle all inquiries froet his answers from Major Dewey Fournet, Blue Book's liaison officer in the Pentagon, and if Dewey didn't have the answer, Al had pereh previous UFO publicity battles when he was in the Office of Public Inforht Field
The interest in the UFO's that was shown by the press in May was surpassed only by the interest of the Pentagon Starting in May, I gave on the average of one briefing in Washi+ngton every teeks, and there was always a full house From the tone of the official comments to the public about UFO's, it would indicate that there wasn't a great deal of interest, but nothing could be further fro a sign that reads ”Secret Briefing in Progress”
After one of the briefings a colonel (who is now a brigadier general) presented a plan that called for using several flights of F- 94C jet interceptors for the specific purpose of trying to get soht that he proposed would be an operational unit with six aircraft--tould be on constant alert
The F-94C's, then the hottest operational jet we had, would be stripped of all coive them peak performance, and they would carry a special camera in the nose The squadrons would be located at places in the United States where UFO's were ressed to the point of estihts could be stripped, how soon special cameras could be built, and whether or not two specific Air Force bases in the US could support the units
Finally the colonel's plan was shelved, but not because he was considered to be crazy After considerable study and debate at high command level, it was decided that twelve F-94C's couldn't be spared for the job and it would have been ineffective to use fewer airplanes
The consideration that the colonel's plan received was an indication of how so out exactly what the UFO's really were And in the discussions the words ”interplanetary craft” cas caure in the Air Force, Thomas K Finletter, then the Secretary for Air On May 8, 1952, Lieutenant Colonel R J Taylor of Colonel Dunn's staff and I presented an hour-long briefing to Secretary Finletter and his staff
He listened intently and asked several questions about specific sightings when the briefing was finished If he was at all worried about the UFO's he certainly didn't show it His only co a fine job, Captain ItThank you”
Then hestatement for the press:
”No concrete evidence has yet reached us either to prove or disprove the existence of the so-called flying saucers There res that the Air Force investigators have been unable to explain As long as this is true, the Air Force will continue to study flying saucer reports”
In May 1952, Project Blue Book received seventy-nine UFO reports compared to ninety-nine in April It looked as if we'd passed the peak and were now on the downhill side The 178 reports of the past twothe thousand or so letters that we'd received directly fro since we'd had tiate and analyze only the better reports During June we planned to clear out the backlog, and then we could relax
But never underestian to deliver clippings in big cardboard cartons
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Big Flap
In early June 1952, Project Blue Book was operating according to the operational plan that had been set up in January 1952 It had taken six months to put the plan into effect, and to a person who has never been indoctrinated into the ways of thetiovernment worker and you'll find that it was about par for the red tape course
We had learned early in the project that about 60 per cent of the reported UFO's were actually balloons, airplanes, or astronomical bodies viewed under unusual conditions, so our operational plan was set up to quickly weed out this type of report This would give us more time to concentrate on the unknown cases
To weed out reports in which balloons, airplanes, and astronomical bodies were reported as UFO's, we utilized a flow of data that continually poured into Project Blue Book We received position reports on all flights of the big skyhook balloons and, by et the details about the flight of any other research balloon or regularly scheduled weather balloon in the United States The location of aircraft in an area where a UFO had been reported was usually checked by the intelligence officer who s by requesting the location of flights from CAA and military air bases Astronoot froht be astronoory of report were double-checked by Project Bear's astronoave us raphic bulletins and Notaovernave us other clues Every six hours we received a complete set of weather data A dozen or ht on a reported UFO were continually being studied