Force, Thomas K. Finletter, then the Secretary for Air. On May 8,
1952, Lieutenant Colonel R. J. Taylor of Colonel Dunn's staff and I
presented an hour-long briefing to Secretary Finletter and his staff.
He listened intently and asked several questions about specific
sightings when the briefing was finished. If he was at all worried
about the UFO's he certainly didn't show it. His only comment was,
"You're doing a fine job, Captain. It must be interesting. Thank you."

Then he made the following statement for the press:

"No concrete evidence has yet reached us either to prove or disprove
the existence of the so-called flying saucers. There remain, however,
a number of sightings that the Air Force investigators have been
unable to explain. As long as this is true, the Air Force will
continue to study flying saucer reports."

In May 1952, Project Blue Book received seventy-nine UFO reports
compared to ninety-nine in April. It looked as if we'd passed the
peak and were now on the downhill side. The 178 reports of the past
two months, not counting the thousand or so letters that we'd
received directly from the public, had piled up a sizable backlog
since we'd had time to investigate and analyze only the better
reports. During June we planned to clear out the backlog, and then we
could relax.

But never underestimate the power of a UFO. In June the big flap hit
--they began to deliver clippings in big cardboard cartons.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Big Flap

In early June 1952, Project Blue Book was operating according to the
operational plan that had been set up in January 1952. It had taken
six months to put the plan into effect, and to a person who has never
been indoctrinated into the ways of the military, this may seem like
a long time. But consult your nearest government worker and you'll
find that it was about par for the red tape course.

We had learned early in the project that about 60 per cent of the
reported UFO's were actually balloons, airplanes, or astronomical
bodies viewed under unusual conditions, so our operational plan was
set up to quickly weed out this type of report. This would give us
more time to concentrate on the unknown cases.

To weed out reports in which balloons, airplanes, and astronomical
bodies were reported as UFO's, we utilized a flow of data that
continually poured into Project Blue Book. We received position
reports on all flights of the big skyhook balloons and, by merely
picki