ying saucers even though publicly these same people had
jovially sloughed off the press with answers of "hallucinations,"
"absurd," or "a waste of time and money." They weren't wild-eyed fans
but they were certainly interested.

Colonel S. H. Kirkland and I once spent a whole day briefing and
talking to the Beacon Hill Group, the code name for a collection of
some of the world's leading scientists and industrialists. This
group, formed to consider and analyze the toughest of military
problems, took a very serious interest in our project and gave much
good advice. At Los Alamos and again at Sandia Base our briefings
were given in auditoriums to standing room only crowds. In addition I
gave my briefings at National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
laboratories, at Air Research and Development centers, at Office of
Naval Research facilities and at the Air Force University. Then we
briefed special groups of scientists.

Normally scientists are a cautious lot and stick close to proven
facts, keeping their personal opinions confined to small groups of
friends, but when they know that there is a sign on a door that says
"Classified Briefing in Progress," inhibitions collapse like the
theories that explain all the UFO's away. People say just what they
think.

I could jazz up this part of the UFO story as so many other
historians of the UFO have and say that Dr. So-and-So believes that
the reported flying saucers are from outer space or that Dr. Whositz
is firmly convinced that Mars is inhabited. I talked to plenty of Dr.
So-and-So's who believed that flying saucers were real and who were
absolutely convinced that other planets or bodies in the universe
were inhabited, but we were looking for proven facts and not just
personal opinions.

However, some of the questions we asked the scientists had to be
answered by personal opinions because the exact answers didn't exist.
When such questions came up, about all we could do was to try to get
the largest and most representative cross section of personal
opinions upon which to base our decisions. In this category of
questions probably the most frequently discussed was the possibility
that other celestial bodies in the universe were populated with
intelligent beings. The exact answer to this is that no one knows.
But the consensus was that it wouldn't be at all surprising.

All the briefings we were giving added to our work load because UFO
reports were still coming in in reco