ping. 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:

AIR FORCE DEBUNKS SAUCERS AS JUST NATURAL PHENOMENA

The Washington National Sightings proved one thing, something that
many of us already knew: in order to forestall any more trouble
similar to what we'd just been through we always had to get all of
the facts and not try to hide them. A great deal of the press's
interest was caused by the Air Force's reluctance to give out any
information, and the reluctance on the part of the Air Force was
caused by simply not having gone out to find the answers.

But had someone gone out and made a more thorough investiga