rs, planets, meteors, etc. By early March the
Air Weather Service and Dr. Hynek had some positive identifications.
According to the old records, with these solutions and those that
Sign and Grudge had already found, about 50 per cent of the reported
UFO's could now be positively identified as hoaxes, balloons,
planets, sundogs, etc. It was now time to start phase two, the
publicity campaign.

For many months reporters and writers had been trying to reach
behind the security wall and get the UFO story from the horse's
mouth, but no luck. Some of them were still trying but they were
having no success because they were making the mistake of letting it
slip that they didn't believe that airline pilots, military pilots,
scientists, and just all around solid citizens were having
"hallucinations," perpetrating "hoaxes," or being deceived by the
"misidentification of common objects." The people of Project Grudge
weren't looking for this type of writer, they wanted a writer who
would listen to them and write their story. As a public relations
officer later told me, "We had a devil of a time. All of the writers
who were after saucer stories had made their own investigations of
sightings and we couldn't convince them they were wrong."

Before long, however, the right man came along. He was Sidney
Shallet, a writer for _The_ _Saturday_ _Evening_ _Post_. He seemed to
have the prerequisites that were desired, so his visit to ATIC was
cleared through the Pentagon. Harry Haberer, a crack Air Force public
relations man, was assigned the job of seeing that Shallet got his
story. I have heard many times, from both military personnel and
civilians, that the Air Force told Shallet exactly what to say in his
article--play down the UFO's--don't write anything that even hints
that there might be something foreign in our skies. I don't believe
that this is the case. I think that he just wrote the UFO story as it
was told to him, told to him by Project Grudge.

Shallet's article, which appeared in two parts in the April 30 and
May 7, 1949, issues of _The_ _Saturday_ _Evening_ _Post_, is
important in the history of the UFO and in understanding the UFO
problem because it had considerable effect on public opinion. Many
people had, with varying degrees of interest, been wondering about
the UFO's for over a year and a half. Very few had any definite
opinions one way or the other. The feeling seemed to be that the Air
Force is working on the probl