he said.

It was widely suggested that all the UFO's were meteors. Two Chicago
astronomers queered this. Dr. Gerard Kuiper, director of the
University of Chicago observatory, was quoted as flatly saying the
UFO's couldn't be meteors. "They are probably man-made," he told the
Associated Press. Dr. Oliver Lee, director of Northwestern
University's observatory, agreed with Dr. Kuiper and he threw in an
additional confusion factor that had been in the back of many
people's minds. Maybe they were our own aircraft.

The government had been denying that UFO's belonged to the U.S. from
the first, but Dr. Vannevar Bush, the world-famous scientist, and Dr.
Merle Tuve, inventor of the proximity fuse, added their weight.
"Impossible," they said.

All of this time unnamed Air Force officials were disclaiming
serious interest in the UFO subject. Yet every time a newspaper
reporter went out to interview a person who had seen a UFO,
intelligence agents had already been flown in, gotten the detailed
story complete with sketches of the UFO, and sped back to their base
to send the report to Project Sign. Many people had supposedly been
"warned" not to talk too much. The Air Force was mighty interested in
hallucinations.

Thus 1947 ended with various-sized question marks in the mind of the
public. If you followed flying saucers closely the question mark was
big, if you just noted the UFO story titles in the papers it was
smaller, but it was there and it was growing. Probably none of the
people, military or civilian, who had made the public statements were
at all qualified to do so but they had done it, their comments had
been printed, and their comments had been read. Their comments formed
the question mark.

CHAPTER THREE

The Classics

1948 was only one hour and twenty-five minutes old when a gentleman
from Abilene, Texas, made the first UFO report of the year. What he
saw, "a fan-shaped glow" in the sky, was insignificant as far as UFO
reports go, but it ushered in a year that was to bring feverish
activity to Project Sign.

With the Soviets practically eliminated as a UFO source, the idea of
interplanetary spaceships was becoming more popular. During 1948 the
people in ATIC were openly discussing the possibility of
interplanetary visitors without others tapping their heads and
looking smug. During 1948 the novelty of UFO's had worn off for the
press and every John and Jane Doe who saw one didn't make the front
pages a