t could be built, the human body couldn't stand the violent
maneuvers that were reported. The aircraft-structures people seconded
this, no material known could stand the loads of the reported
maneuvers and heat of the high speeds.

Still convinced that the UFO's were real objects, the people at ATIC
began to change their thinking. Those who were convinced that the
UFO's were of Soviet origin now began to eye outer space, not because
there was any evidence that the UFO's did come from outer space but
because they were convinced that UFO's existed and only some unknown
race with a highly developed state of technology could build such
vehicles. As far as the effect on the human body was concerned, why
couldn't these people, whoever they might be, stand these horrible
maneuver forces? Why judge them by earthly standards? I found a memo
to this effect was in the old Project Sign files.

Project Sign ended 1947 with a new problem. How do you collect
interplanetary intelligence? During World War II the organization
that was ATIC's forerunner, the Air Materiel Command's secret "T-2,"
had developed highly effective means of wringing out every possible
bit of information about the technical aspects of enemy aircraft.
ATIC knew these methods, but how could this be applied to spaceships?
The problem was tackled with organized confusion.

If the confusion in the minds of Air Force people was organized the
confusion in the minds of the public was not. Publicized statements
regarding the UFO were conflicting.

A widely printed newspaper release, quoting an unnamed Air Force
official in the Pentagon, said:

The "flying saucers" are one of three things:

Solar reflections on low-hanging clouds.

Small meteors that break up, their crystals catching the rays of the
sun.

Icing conditions could have formed large hailstones and they might
have flattened out and glided.

A follow-up, which quoted several scientists, said in essence that
the unnamed Air Force official was crazy. Nobody even heard of
crystallized meteors, or huge, flat hailstones, and the solar-
reflection theory was absurd.

_Life_, _Time_, _Newsweek_, and many other news magazines carried
articles about the UFO's. Some were written with tongue in cheek,
others were not. All the articles mentioned the Air Force's mass-
hysterical induced hallucinations. But a Veterans' Administration
psychiatrist publicly pooh-poohed this. "Too many people are seeing
things,"