teresting report on all types of lightning. It was included in the
Grudge Report but contained a note: "None of the recorded incidents
appear to have been lightning."

There was one last appendix. It was entitled "Summary of the
Evaluation of Remaining Reports." What the title meant was, We have
23 per cent of the reports that we can't explain but we have to
explain them because we don't believe in flying saucers. This
appendix contributed greatly to the usage of the analogy to the Dark
Ages, the age of "intellectual stagnation."

This appendix was important--it was the meat of the whole report.
Every UFO sighting had been carefully checked, and those with answers
had been sifted out. Then the ones listed in "Summary of the
Evaluation of Remaining Reports" should be the best UFO reports--the
ones with no answers.

This was the appendix that the newsmen grabbed at when the Grudge
Report was released. It contained the big story. But if you'll check
back through old newspaper files you will hardly find a mention of
the Grudge Report.

I was told that reporters just didn't believe it when I tried to
find out why the Grudge Report hadn't been mentioned in the
newspapers. I got the story from a newspaper correspondent in
Washington whom I came to know pretty well and who kept me filled in
on the latest UFO scuttlebutt being passed around the Washington
press circles. He was one of those humans who had a brain like a
filing cabinet; he could remember everything about everything. UFO's
were a hobby of his. He remembered when the Grudge Report came out;
in fact, he'd managed to get a copy of his own. He said the report
had been quite impressive, but only in its ambiguousness, illogical
reasoning, and very apparent effort to write off all UFO reports at
any cost. He, personally, thought that it was a poor attempt to put
out a "fake" report, full of misleading information, to cover up the
real story. Others, he told me, just plainly and simply didn't know
what to think--they were confused.

And they had every right to be confused.

As an example of the way that many of the better reports of the 1947-
49 period were "evaluated" let's take the report of a pilot who
tangled with a UFO near Washington, D.C., on the night of November
18, 1948.

At about 9:45 EST I noticed a light moving generally north to south
over Andrews AFB. It appeared to be one continuous, glowing white
light. I thought it was an aircraft with only one