I jokingly commented about wondering who the expert was. In a half
hour I found out--I was. When Major Gregory and I walked into the
lobby of the Roger Smith Hotel to check in, reporters and
photographers rose from the easy chairs and divans like a covey of
quail. They wanted my secrets, but I wasn't going to tell nor would I
pose for pictures while I wasn't telling anything. Newspaper
reporters are a determined lot, but Greg ran interference and we
reached the elevator without even a "no comment."
The next day was one of confusion. After the first Washington
sighting the prevailing air in the section of the Pentagon's fourth
floor, which is occupied by Air Force Intelligence, could be
described as excitement, but this day it was confusion. There was a
maximum of talk and a minimum of action. Everyone agreed that both
sightings should be thoroughly investigated, but nobody did anything.
Major Fournet and I spent the entire morning "just leaving" for
somewhere to investigate "something." Every time we would start to
leave, something more pressing would come up.
About 10:00A.M. the President's air aide, Brigadier General Landry,
called intelligence at President Truman's request to find out what
was going on. Somehow I got the call. I told General Landry that the
radar target could have been caused by weather but that we had no
proof.
To add to the already confused situation, new UFO reports were
coming in hourly. We kept them quiet mainly because we weren't able
to investigate them right away, or even confirm the facts. And we
wanted to confirm the facts because some of the reports, even though
they were from military sources, were difficult to believe.
Prior to the Washington sightings in only a very few of the many
instances in which radar had picked up UFO targets had the targets
themselves supposedly been seen visually. Radar experts had
continually pointed out this fact to us as an indication that maybe
all of the radar targets were caused by freak weather conditions. "If
people had just seen a light, or an object, near where the radar
showed the UFO target to be, you would have a lot more to worry
about," radar technicians had told me many times.
Now people were seeing the same targets that the radars were picking
up, and not just at Washington.
On the same night as the second Washington sighting we had a really
good report from California. An ADC radar had picked up an
unidentified target and an F-94C had been scrambled. The radar
vectored the jet interceptor into the target, the radar operator in
the '94 locked-on to it, and as the airplane closed in the pilot and
RO saw that they were headed directly toward a large, yellowish-
orange light. For several minutes they played tag with the UFO. Both
the radar on the ground and the radar in the F-94 showed that as soon
as the airplane would get almost within gunnery range of the UFO it
would suddenly pull away at a terrific speed. Then in a minute or two
it would slow down enough to let the F-94 catch it again.
When I talked to the F-94 crew on the phone, the pilot said that
they felt as if this were just a big aerial cat-and-mouse game--and
they didn't like it--at any moment they thought the cat might have
pounced.
Needless to say, this was an unknown.
About midmorning on Tuesday, July 29th, Major General John Samford
sent word down that he would hold a press conference that afternoon
in an attempt to straighten out the UFO situation with the press.
Donald Keyhoe reports on the press conference and the events leading
up to it in detail in his book, _Flying_ _Saucers_ _from_ _Outer_
_Space_. He indicates that before the conference started, General
Samford sat behind his big walnut desk in Room 3A138 in the Pentagon
and battled with his conscience. Should he tell the public "the real
truth"--that our skies are loaded with spaceships? No, the public
might panic. The only answer would be to debunk the UFO's.
This bit of reporting makes Major Keyhoe the greatest journalist in
history. This beats wire tapping. He reads minds. And not only that,
he can read them right through the walls of the Pentagon. But I'm
glad that Keyhoe was able to read the General's mind and that he
wrote the true and accurate facts about what he was really thinking
because I spent quite a bit of time talking to the General that day
and he sure fooled me. I had no idea he was worried about what he
should tell the public.
When the press conference, which was the largest and longest the Air
Force had held since World War II, convened at 4:00P.M., General
Samford made an honest effort to straighten out the Washington
National Sightings, but the cards were stacked against him before he
started. He had to hedge on many answers to questions from the press
because he didn't know the answers. This hedging gave the impression
that he was trying to cover up something more than just the fact that
his people had fouled up in not fully investigating the sightings.
Then he had brought in Captain Roy James from ATIC to handle all the
queries about radar. James didn't do any better because he'd just
arrived in Washington that morning and didn't know very much more
about the sightings than he'd read in the papers. Major Dewey Fournet
and Lieutenant Holcomb, who had been at the airport during the
sightings, were extremely conspicuous by their absence, especially
since it was common knowledge among the press that they weren't
convinced the UFO's picked up on radars were weather targets.
But somehow out of this chaotic situation came exactly the result
that was intended--the press got off our backs. Captain James's
answers about the possibility of the radar targets' being caused by
temperature inversions had been construed by the press to mean that
this was the Air Force's answer, even though today the twin sightings
are still carried as unknowns.
The next morning headlines from Bangor to Bogota read: