UFOs and the Media

Down, Down, Down With Censorship
Part 2
From the TRUE Report On Flying Saucers, 1967
By Major Donald E. Keyhoe
 

         The Air Force, of course, no longer talks in these terms and no doubt wishes it had never published the Grudge Report. The official Air Force attitude now is one of scoffing at all that was said in the 1949 report. Anybody who talks about UFO's today is a "crackpot" or is "misguided." When the news can't be suppressed, the Air Force hopes, it can be laughed away.
         We at NICAP are aware, of course, that not all UFO sighting reports are genuine. We know there are crackpots and publicity-seekers in our field of inquiry, as in all fields of human endeavor. We are not strangers to the elaborate hoax, the alcoholic hallucination, the bizarre mental aberration. When a man comes to us and says he has taken a flying-saucer trip with nude maidens from Venus, or his back yard is swarming with little green men smoking purple cigars, we nod politely and go our way. We screen all sighting reports with care, for our position is a ticklish one. The Air Force would laugh us out of business if we published reports of UFO incidents that later turned out to be demonstrably hoaxes or illusions.
         But there are reports every month that come through the screening process as unarguably genuine. Reports from airline pilots, for example. Consider the position an airline pilot is in. Here is a man who, in the first place, guards his health carefully. He must be in top physical condition to hold his job. His eyesight and other health parameters are checked repeatedly. At the first sign of lapsing health he will be grounded. No airline carrying passengers could afford to be careless about this. Thus it can safely be assumed that a pilot is not subject to visual or other aberrations that will make him see things which aren't there. With literally millions of miles of flying behind him, he is not likely, either, to mis-identify things he sees in the air.
         He isn't likely to mistake a star, a balloon or another plane for a flying saucer. Alcohol is absolutely out of the question If he were to report for duty drunk, he would be fired on the spot. In fact most airlines forbid even a glass of beer for flying crews for at least 12 hours (often 24 hours) before takeoff. Moreover, a pilot is not likely to perpetrate a flying-saucer hoax. Even when he genuinely sees a UFO he hesitates to report it. He risks being ridiculed and being identified as a man who sees what isn't there. He risks his very job. A pilot pretending he'd seen a UFO would be like a surgeon pretending he had shaking palsy.
         Despite all this, the Air force still tries to raise doubts about the occasional pilot who defies the news blackout and tells his UFO story to the public press. For example, there was the famous Killian Case of 1959 - an incident that occurred before the hush-up seemed to be fully in effect. On the night of February 24, 1959, an American Airlines DC-6 was flying across Pennsylvania toward Detroit. At the controls were Capt. Peter W. Killian and First Officer John Dee, and the passenger cabin was well filled. Suddenly three large, brilliantly lighted, round or disc-shaped craft appeared in the air nearby. One of them maneuvered close to the DC-6 as though for a brief inspection, then went back to join its companions. Eventually the three streaked off into the blackness from which they'd come.
         Captain Killian, a man with 15 years and 4 million miles of airline flying behind him, told the curious story to the press. The Air Force instantly jumped on him. What he'd really seen, said the Air force, was a group of three stars appearing and disappearing behind scattered clouds. Impossible, replied Killian. "The sky was absolutely clear above us. Federal Aviation Agency records show we were flying at 8,500 feet. The clouds were at 3,500. Let the Air force explain how we saw stars through clouds 5,000 feet beneath us."
         American Airlines then got behind its man and announced that other pilots had often encountered UFO's in the same area. The argument grew hotter. In an interview with a New York Herald Tribune reporter, an Air force spokesman remarked that some UFO witnesses "were so drunk they couldn't remember what they saw." This harpoon wasn't aimed directly at Killian, but it was a hell of a nasty implication to make under the circumstances.
         Other people now began to jump into the debate. In Washington, Congressman Sam Friedel of Maryland offered Captain Killian a "day in court" if he wanted to come to the Capital. Evidently seeing that the "star" theory wouldn't hold up if this happened, the Air force hastily came up with a new explanation: Killian had seen a KC-97 tanker refueling three B-47 jets. This was nonsense too. All aircraft flights in the U.S., including refuelings, are reported to both the FAA and the Air Defense Command. If there had been a refueling operation that night over Pennsylvania, the fact would have been known and released at once - not "discovered" two weeks later. In any case, it is inconceivable that a veteran pilot would fail to recognize a familiar aircraft when he saw it.
         And there were other facts in the case that the Air Force could not explain away. Specifically:
         First Officer Dee and the passengers also saw the alien craft. They corroborated Captain Killian's story.
         Two other American Airlines crews, flying in the vicinity, were alerted by radio. They saw the UFO's too.
         Three United Air Lines planes were plying the airways in that sky neighborhood that night. They had no contact with Captain Killian or the other American Airlines crews. But they, too, saw and privately reported three UFO's.
         All this might have come out in a public debate. But then, abruptly, Captain Killian stopped arguing. In a statement to NICAP, his wife said that American airlines had been instructed by the Air Force to muzzle him. As of mid-1964, he was still forbidden to say anything more in public about that strange night in 1959.
         The Air Force has other means of shutting people up. As an example, consider the infamous Stokes Case. This occurred in November, 1957. James Strokes, an engineer at the Air Force Missile Development Center close to Alamogordo, New Mexico, was driving his car down a highway when a gigantic oval-shaped machine flew overhead at an estimated 1,500 to 2,00 mph. Other witnesses on the highway also saw the enigmatic craft. Stokes' car radio failed and his engine stalled when the device passed over him, and he sat and stared in amazement as it streaked over the horizon.
         Stokes talked to the press. The first result was that an order suddenly went out to all personnel at the Missile Center. The order, approved by Maj. Gen. L. I. Davis, the commanding officer, forbade everybody at the Center to comment publicly on UFO reports from then until further notice. This by itself indicated that the Air Force was anxious to keep something from the public. The next step was the issuance of a nationwide press release that bluntly called Stokes' story a hoax. Muzzled by General Davis's order, Stokes could not argue with this. The Air Force also took another step, a very suggestive one. Stokes was quietly promoted two grades. The Stokes Case and the Killian Affair, and other, similar episodes, have had the effect of tightening the news cover-up. Pilots report quietly to their supervisors and to NICAP, but seldom to the press. Understandably, they fear the consequences of any public statement.
         The Air Force's public statements meanwhile, have gone virtually unchallenged by the public at large. But this state of things can't last forever. The American public isn't as gullible as some government officials seem to think. Sooner or later a day has got to come when the public asks a question that the air force won't be able to answer. "See here," the public will say, "could it be, could it really be, that every one of those thousands of UFO witnesses was mistaken?" Of course it couldn't be. And the air Force knows it couldn't. this was as much as admitted not long ago by no less a man than Dr. J. Allen Hynek, eminent astrophysicist who has for a long time been chief Air force consultant on UFO's. Writing of his thoughts about UFO's in the Yale University journal, Dr. Hynek stated: "The intelligence of the observers and reporters of UFO's is certainly at least average, in many cases above average, in some cases embarrassingly above average."
         NICAP knows of two cases in which Air force fighter planes apparently tangled with UFO's and lost. There may also be similar events which the Air Force has kept hidden. One is the famous Capt. Thomas Mantell case, the other an episode that took place on November 23, 1953. An unknown object was reported in the sky over Lake Superior. From Kinross Air Force Base in Michigan, an F-89 jet took off to investigate. At the controls was Lt. Felix Moncia, Jr., and in the rear cockpit, preparing to track the UFO by radar, was Lt. R. R. Wilson. An Air Force radar crew followed the whole operation from the ground. They saw the F-89 follow the UFO for 160 miles over Lake Superior. There was no advance indication of any trouble. But suddenly the jet and UFO blips merged on the radar-scope. The rest was silence. Radio calls to Monica and Wilson were unanswered. A two-day search of the lake turned up not a single piece of wreckage, not a lifejacket, not a slick of oil. Neither Moncia, nor Wilson, nor their F-89 were ever seen again.
         The Air Force made all kinds of attempts to explain away this weird episode. At first the UFO was explained as an off-course Canadian airliner, then as a Royal Canadian Air Force plane. But neither explanation held water. It is a positive fact, substantiated by the Canadian Air force itself in letters to NICAP, that no Canadian aircraft of any kind were in the vicinity at the time. The UFO was quite definitely an alien space vehicle. But precisely what took place between it and Moncia's plane is a total mystery.
         Soon we may find out a little more about such episodes, and a lot more about UFO's in general. For pressure is building in Washington to make the Air Force end the secrecy. Particularly in Congress, the feeling is growing that public hearings should be held to air the entire mysterious subject. NICAP has submitted to Congress a documented report on its painstaking seven-year investigation in the hope of spurring action.
         "A full explanation of the 'flying saucers' seems due," said Senator Vance Hartke of Indiana in a letter to NICAP on June 5, 1963. Said Senator William Proxmire of Wisconsin in 1963: "The very fact that so many inexplicable incidents have occurred is reason enough for a thorough investigation." Many other members of congress, of both parties, have also made strong statements in support of public hearings.
         Sooner or later the truth has got to come out. A secret this big, with such enormous implications for all of humanity, cannot possibly be kept forever. Congressional hearings are almost bound to be held eventually - probably within the next year. The basic finding of these hearings - that we are indeed under surveillance of some kind by visitors from the universe - will undoubtedly startle and frighten many people throughout the world. But it shouldn't surprise you at all. The facts, the evidence, are before you right now.
 

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