UFO, page 58
“Those who had been on the periphery”: David Michael Jacobs, The UFO Controversy in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 193.
“The picture was overexposed”: Frank Edwards, Flying Saucers—Serious Business (New York: Bantam, 1966), 165; “The Sherman, Texas, Photo Case,” National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, http://www.nicap.org/650802sherman_dir.htm.
“Something is going on”: Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, 194.
“Maybe it’s time”: Richard H. Hall, The UFO Evidence: A Thirty-Year Report, Vol. 2 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001), 4.; “ ‘Saucers’ Are Flying,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, August 4, 1965, 4.
Even some who had: Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, 196.
On September 3: Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, “Exeter CE1.”
“At this time I have been unable”: Ibid.
The responding officers: Ibid.
J. Allen Hynek, for his part: Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, 198.
“In 19 years and more than 10,000 sightings”: Ibid.
UFO researchers have obtained: “Appendix I,” Special Report of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board: Ad Hoc Committee to Review Project “BLUE BOOK,” March 1966, http://www.cufon.org/cufon/obrien.htm.
Jacques Vallée was less: Jacques Vallée, Forbidden Science: Journals 1957–1969 (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1992), 170.
As the youngest member: William Poundstone, Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos (New York: Henry Holt, 1999), 92; Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, 198.201 One night after giving: Carl Sagan, “UFO’s: The Extraterrestrial and Other Hypotheses,” in Carl Sagan and Thornton Page, eds., UFO’s—A Scientific Debate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1972), 272–73.
That belief was only: Poundstone, Carl Sagan, 64–65.
Two years later: Ibid., 66.
CHAPTER 24: SWAMP GAS
To him, it didn’t seem: David Michael Jacobs, The UFO Controversy in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 213.
“The unwillingness of government”: Oscar Handlin, “Reader’s Choice,” Atlantic, August 1966, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1966/08/readers-choice/659614/.
In a six-part series: “Those ‘Flying Saucers’… Air Force Explainings-Away of UFOs Deepens Mystery,” Evening Express (Portland, ME), January 17, 1966, 2.
“For anyone who didn’t live through it”: James W. Moseley and Karl T. Pflock, Shockingly Close to the Truth!: Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2002), 193–94.
“We saw a real brilliant light”: Jack Butler, “UFO: In 1966, Hillsdale Had Its Own Close Encounter,” Collegian (Hillsdale, MI), March 19, 2015, https://hillsdalecollegian.com/2015/03/ufo-in-1966-hillsdale-had-its-own-close-encounter/.
“All three networks are talking”: Jacques Vallée, Forbidden Science: Journals 1957–1969 (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1992), 173.
The Washington Post: Unidentified Flying Objects: Hearing by Committee on Armed Services, 89th Cong. 6050 (1966), https://archive.org/details/ufo_1966_1/ufo_1966_2/page/n11/mode/2up.
In response: Mark O’Connell, The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs (New York: Dey St., 2017), 242.
There was also a clear: J. Allen Hynek, “Are Flying Saucers Real?,” Saturday Evening Post, December 17, 1966, 20.
“Men spilled out”: O’Connell, The Close Encounters Man, 184.
“So far,” he said at the time: Ibid., 187.
Matters were only made: Ibid., 191.
“Half-heartedly, he settled on: Hynek, “Are Flying Saucers Real?,” 20.
“It would seem to me”: O’Connell, The Close Encounters Man, 191.
“I’m just a simple fellow”: Paul O’Neil, “ ‘Invasion’—by Something,” Life, April 1, 1966, 29; William B. Treml, “Findings on ‘Saucers’ Draw Sharp Reactions,” Ann Arbor News, March 26, 1966, https://aadl.org/taxonomy/term/9218.206 It was perhaps: O’Connell, The Close Encounters Man, 194.
The quick, dismissive: Vallée, Forbidden Science, 175.
Ford acknowledged his “special interest”: Gerald R. Ford to L. Mendel Rivers, March 28, 1966, in Unidentified Flying Objects, 6046–47; Gerald R. Ford, “Radio Tape for Fifth District Stations” (Washington, DC, March 30, 1966), Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0054/4526519.pdf.
When the White House’s: Gerald R. Ford, statement, March 29, 1966, Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library and Museum, https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0054/12130682.pdf.
“Let me assure you that the Air Force”: Unidentified Flying Objects, 5992.
It was a powerful declaration: Ibid., 6004–05.
Hynek tried to salvage things: Ibid., 6007–08.
Later, he added,“Puzzling cases exist”: Ibid., 6009.
“In seriousness, the people in Vermont”: Ibid., 6067.
While “the theme of the show”: Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, 203.
Cronkite seemed: Ibid.
That summer a Gallup poll: Ibid., 200.
CHAPTER 25: THE UFO GAP
“There were times when I would”: J. Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée, The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1975), 193.
He was also conscious: Ibid., 193–94.
When McDonald reported: Ann Druffel, Firestorm: Dr. James E. McDonald’s Fight for UFO Science (Columbus, NC: Wild Flower Press, 2003), 20.
That spring: Ibid., 52.
“You’ve been involved in a foul-up”: Ibid., 61.
“The explanations [are] pure bullshit”: Jacques Vallée, Forbidden Science: Journals 1957–1969 (Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books, 1992), 186–87.
“This man has many contacts”: Ibid., 186.
The conversation: Hynek and Vallée, The Edge of Reality, 204.
“I am a Buddhist”: Vallée, Forbidden Science, 190–91.
The Pentagon decreed: Ibid., 191.
His international ties: Lewis M. Branscomb, “Edward U. Condon, Ph.D., 1958–1964,” Washington University in St. Louis University Libraries, https://libguides.wustl.edu/c.php?g=338660&p=2280746.
Condon responded: Jessica Wang, “Edward Condon and the Cold War Politics of Loyalty,” Physics Today 54, no. 12 (December 2001): 38.
A few years before: Grace Marmor Spruch, “Reporter Edward Condon,” Saturday Review, February 1, 1969, 55.
Even though he wouldn’t: J. Allen Hynek, “Are Flying Saucers Real?,” Saturday Evening Post, December 17, 1966, 21.
As the committee started: Ibid., 20–21.
Now Edward Condon had about $500,000: David Michael Jacobs, The UFO Controversy in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 208–11.
Upon arrival: Vallée, Forbidden Science, 229.
As they left: Ibid., 231.
That fall: Hynek and Vallée, The Edge of Reality, 202.
That December: Mark O’Connell, The Close Encounters Man: How One Man Made the World Believe in UFOs (New York: Dey St., 2017), 229.
“What little ‘hard’ information”: J. Allen Hynek, “The UFO Gap,” Playboy, December 1967, 146, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81R00560R000100010006-5.pdf.
At best, Hynek: Ibid., 144.
“The expense is trivial”: Ibid., 271.
Instead, they focused: Edward U. Condon, Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1969), 60.
To help with photographic data, the committee enlisted: Vallée, Forbidden Science, 245.
Shortly after, “he picked up his questionnaire”: David R. Saunders and R. Roger Harkins, UFOs? Yes!: Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong (New York: World Publishing, 1969), 69.
Project coordinator Robert Low: Ibid., 135.
Perhaps even more troubling: Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, 211.
In January 1967: Ibid., 212.
As the weeks went by: Vallée, Forbidden Science, 236.
The confidential internal: Saunders and Harkins, UFOs, 129.
CHAPTER 26: THE CONDON REPORT
Perhaps not surprisingly: Donald H. Menzel to J. Edward Roush, July 24, 1968, in Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects: Hearings Before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, 90th Cong. 205 (1968), https://books.google.com/books?id=Yx4vAAAAMAAJ.
With more humility: Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, 1.
To start, Hynek: Ibid., 4–5.
“We are not dealing with publicity seekers”: Ibid., 21.
The testimonies and witnesses: Ibid., 26–27.
“I do not think the evidence is at all persuasive”: Ibid., 86.
As it turned out: William Poundstone, Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos (New York: Henry Holt, 1999), 171.
“[He] has dashed”: Ibid., 172.
One of Gold’s maxims: Ibid., 173.
The opportunity: John Yaukey, “Life on Mars,” Ithaca Journal, August 19, 1966, 4A.
Sagan noted that: Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects, 86–87.
“For varying reasons, UFO-related pranks”: Edward U. Condon, Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1969), 62.
In his portion of the document: Ibid., 1.
A few pages later: Ibid., 5.
The lack of urgency: J. Allen Hynek, “The Condon Report and UFOs,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April 1969, 39.
Condon took the criticism: David Michael Jacobs, The UFO Controversy in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 252.
In March 1969: David J. Shea, “NCAS Presentation,” September 8, 2018, 6–7, https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000168-3213-db11-ab7d-33fb55e70000.
Later that year: “Air Force to Terminate Project ‘BLUE BOOK,’ ” news release, December 17, 1969, 1, https://www.esd.whs.mil/Portals/54/Documents/FOID/Reading%20Room/UFOsandUAPs/asdpa1.pdf.
Throughout the summer: Sarah Stewart Johnson, The Sirens of Mars: Searching for Life on Another World (New York: Crown, 2021), 34.
“Just like that, the concept”: Ibid., 48.
NASA had wrestled: W. David Compton, Where No Man Has Gone Before: A History of Apollo Lunar Exploration Missions, NASA, 1989, https://www.hq.nasa.gov/pao/History/SP-4214/ch4-3.html.
“Maybe it’s sure to 99 percent”: “Space: Is the Earth Safe from Lunar Contamination?,” Time, June 13, 1969, https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,942095,00.html.
CHAPTER 27: THE BYURAKAN CONFERENCE
“Never, before or afterward”: Iosif Shklovsky, Five Billion Vodka Bottles to the Moon: Tales of a Soviet Scientist, trans. Mary Flemin Zirin and Harold Zirin (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 257.
The proceedings were almost derailed: Frank Drake and Dava Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?: The Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (New York: Delta, 1992), 111.
As Drake recalled,“Our American contingent”: Ibid., 109.
Such an occasion: V. A. Ambartsumian, “Prospect,” in Sagan, Communication, 3.
He also noted: Ibid., 5.
The dissident Soviet: Shklovsky, Five Billion Vodka Bottles, 259.
Almost exactly thirty years later: Ibid., 41.
Ironically, under the Soviet system: Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?, 96.
It also meant that information: Ibid., 107.
“They did not make any educated guesses”: Ibid.
One of the conference’s most intriguing: F. H. C. Crick and L. E. Orgel, “Directed Panspermia,” Icarus 19 (1973): 341.
At that point: Ibid.; Thomas Gold, “ ‘Cosmic Garbage,’ ” Space Digest, May 1960, 65.
In colorful conversations, Gold was known to lightheartedly imagine: Carl Sagan, “Is There Life Elsewhere, and Did It Come Here?,” New York Times Book Review, November 29, 1981, 32.
Now, in Armenia: Crick and Orgel, “Directed Panspermia,” 342.
According to a 1973 article: Ibid., 343, 344.
Normal science held that life: Ibid.
The scientists were also puzzled by the “anomalous abundance”: Ibid., 345.
“Perhaps the galaxy is lifeless”: Ibid.
Even Crick’s wife told him, “It is not a real theory”: Francis Crick, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), 148; Crick and Orgel, “Directed Panspermia,” 345.
Later, Crick published a book: Nicholas Wade, “Francis Crick, Co-Discoverer of DNA, Dies at 88,” New York Times, July 30, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/30/us/francis-crick-co-discoverer-of-dna-dies-at-88.html.
“This joyful event serves”: Ibid., 261.
CHAPTER 28: THE ARECIBO MESSAGE
“It is… overwhelmingly probable”: Freeman J. Dyson, “Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation,” Science 131, no. 3414 (1960): 1667.
In that heady time: Robert Dixon, “Project Cyclops: The Greatest Radio Telescope Never Built,” in Shuch, Searching for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, 20.
“The Exobiology Division”: Seth Shostak, Confessions of an Alien Hunter (Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2009), 166.
This band, Oliver wrote: Ibid., 64.
In announcing a reprint: “Announcing the Reprint of the Cyclops Report,” SETI League, http://www.setileague.org/articles/cyclops.htm.
“The search for extraterrestrial intelligent life”: Ibid., 171.
“Each passing year has seen”: Astronomy and Astrophysics for the 1970’s: Report of the Astronomy Survey Committee, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1972), 51.
“You have to see it”: Frank Drake and Dava Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?: The Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (New York: Delta, 1992), 73.
The telescope, Drake learned: Ibid., 76.
In 1820, German mathematician: Willy Ley, Rockets, Missiles, and Space Travel (New York: Viking, 1957), 32.
Whether Gauss himself: Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750–1900 (Mineola, NY: Dover, 1999), 205.
In France, a scientist thought: Ibid., 36–37.
Drake compared the conundrum: Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?, 164.
To test its efficacy: Ibid., 167.
Shortly after: Ibid., 169.
“Their minds are uncommonly well prepared”: Ibid.
As conference-goers moved: Ibid., 176.
In the end: Ibid., 180.
Drake believed that it could detect: Ibid., 183.
At the telescope dedication ceremony: Dava Sobel, “New Radio Telescope: A Greeting from Arecibo Speeds to the Stars,” Cornell (Ithaca, NY) Chronicle, November 21, 1974, 2.
Then a loud siren: Dava Sobel, “The Long Hello,” http://www.davasobel.com/blog/124.
By the time the ceremony participants: Drake and Sobel, Is Anyone Out There?, 184.
Far beyond the island: Carl Sagan, Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record (New York: Random House, 1978), 65–66.
CHAPTER 29: CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
“For too long”: Leonard H. Stringfield, Situation Red: The UFO Siege (Fawcett Crest Books, 1977), 15.
Altogether, by his count: Leonard H. Stringfield, “Retrievals of the Third Kind—Part 3: A Case Study of Alleged UFOs and Occupants in Military Custody,” Flying Saucer Review, https://ilpoliedrico.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Retrievals-of-the-Third-Kind.pdf.
Later, he alleged that plainclothes policemen: James W. Moseley and Karl T. Pflock, Shockingly Close to the Truth!: Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2002), 255.
In the years ahead: “Retrievals of the Third Kind—Part 1: A Case Study of Alleged UFOs and Occupants in Military Custody,” Flying Saucer Review, https://ilpoliedrico.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Retrievals-of-the-Third-Kind.pdf.
“More than any other single ufologist”: Moseley and Pflock, Shockingly, 253.
there were seven photos taken: Curtis Peebles, Watch the Skies!: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994), 249.
The book sold widely: Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, “Crashes and Retrievals of UFOs in the Twentieth Century.”
“If one accepted these tales”: Moseley and Pflock, Shockingly, 261.
He called it “Cosmic Watergate”: Jerome Clark, UFOs in the 1980s: The UFO Encyclopedia, Vol. 1 (Detroit, MI: Apogee, 1990), 117.
The same month: Ibid., 232.
After more than a decade: David Michael Jacobs, The UFO Controversy in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 257.
The closure of Blue Book: Ibid., 283.
In 1972, he had published: J. Allen Hynek, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry (Collector’s Library of the Unknown) (Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1989), viii.
Written for a popular audience: Ibid., 229.
The second grouping gathered: Ibid., 138.
It was a category: Ibid., 143.
“It is in Close Encounter cases”: Ibid., 87.
Acknowledging these cases: Ibid.
These were, he emphasized: Ibid., 234.
Its five major areas of research: Ibid.
“The interdisciplinary nature”: Ibid.
The center launched: “Center for UFO Studies Explained,” Skylook: The UFO Monthly, March 1974, 7, https://dailydialectics.com/space/MUFON/MUFON%20UFO%20Journal%20-%201974%203.%20March%20-%20Skylook.pdf/.
Simon put great stock: Ibid., 61.
While the case, Simon decided: Ibid., 63; Peebles, Watch the Skies!, 226.
Over the years: Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, “Hill Abduction Case.”
In the mid-1970s, Astronomy magazine reported: Terence Dickinson, “The Zeta Reticuli (or Ridiculi) Incident,” Astronomy, https://astronomy.com/bonus/zeta.
Betty Hill had actually “recovered”: William Poundstone, Carl Sagan: A Life in the Cosmos (New York: Henry Holt, 1999), 130.
Fish, presented with later evidence: Colin Johnston, “The Truth about Betty Hill’s UFO Star Map,” Armagh Observatory and Planetarium, August 19, 2011, https://armaghplanet.com/betty-hills-ufo-star-map-the-truth.html.
