em and when they get the answer we'll
know. There had been a few brief, ambiguous press releases from the
Air Force but these meant nothing. Consequently when Shallet's
article appeared in the _Post_ it was widely read. It contained
facts, and the facts had come from Air Force Intelligence. This was
the Air Force officially reporting on UFO's for the first time.

The article was typical of the many flying saucer stories that were
to follow in the later years of UFO history, all written from
material obtained from the Air Force. Shallet's article casually
admitted that a few UFO sightings couldn't be explained, but the
reader didn't have much chance to think about this fact because 99
per cent of the story was devoted to the anti-saucer side of the
problem. It was the typical negative approach. I know that the
negative approach is typical of the way that material is handed out
by the Air Force because I was continually being told to "tell them
about the sighting reports we've solved--don't mention the unknowns."
I was never ordered to tell this, but it was a strong suggestion and
in the military when higher headquarters suggests, you do.

Shallet's article started out by psychologically conditioning the
reader by using such phrases as "the great flying saucer scare,"
"rich, full-blown screwiness," "fearsome freaks," and so forth. By
the time the reader gets to the meat of the article he feels like a
rich, full-blown jerk for ever even thinking about UFO's.

He pointed out how the "furor" about UFO reports got so great that
the Air Force was "forced" to investigate the reports reluctantly. He
didn't mention that two months after the first UFO report ATIC had
asked for Project Sign since they believed that UFO's did exist. Nor
did it mention the once Top Secret Estimate of the Situation that
also concluded that UFO's were real. In no way did the article
reflect the excitement and anxiety of the age of Project Sign when
secret conferences preceded and followed every trip to investigate a
UFO report. This was the Air Force being "forced" into reluctantly
investigating the UFO reports.

Laced through the story were the details of several UFO sightings;
some new and some old, as far as the public was concerned. The
original UFO report by Kenneth Arnold couldn't be explained. Arnold,
however, had sold his story to _Fate_ magazine and in the same issue
of _Fate_ were stories with such titles as "Behind the Etheric Veil"
and