ed ATIC the nonchalant attitude didn't exist among
the intelligence analysts. One man had already left for Louisville
and the rest were doing some tall speculating. The story about the
tower-to-air talk. "It looks metallic and it's tremendous in size,"
spread fast. Rumor had it that the tower had carried on a running
conversation with the pilots and that there was more information than
was so far known. Rumor also had it that this conversation had been
recorded. Unfortunately neither of these rumors was true.

Over a period of several weeks the file on the Mantell Incident grew
in size until it was the most thoroughly investigated sighting of
that time, at least the file was the thickest.

About a year later the Air Force released its official report on the
incident. To use a trite term, it was a masterpiece in the art of
"weasel wording." It said that the UFO might have been Venus or it
could have been a balloon. Maybe two balloons. It probably was Venus
except that this is doubtful because Venus was too dim to be seen in
the afternoon. This jolted writers who had been following the UFO
story. Only a few weeks before, _The_ _Saturday_ _Evening_ _Post_ had
published a two-part story entitled "What You Can Believe about
Flying Saucers." The story had official sanction and had quoted the
Venus theory as a positive solution. To clear up the situation,
several writers were allowed to interview a major in the Pentagon,
who was the Air Force's Pentagon "expert" on UFO's. The major was
asked directly about the conclusion of the Mantell Incident, and he
flatly stated that it was Venus. The writers pointed out the official
Air Force analysis. The major's answer was, "They checked again and
it was Venus." He didn't know who "they" were, where they had
checked, or what they had checked, but it was Venus. The writers then
asked, "If there was a later report they had made why wasn't it used
as a conclusion?" "Was it available?" The answer to the last question
was "No," and the lid snapped back down. This interview gave the
definite impression that the Air Force was unsuccessfully trying to
cover up some very important information, using Venus as a front.
Nothing excites a newspaper or magazine writer more than to think he
has stumbled onto a big story and that someone is trying to cover it
up. Many writers thought this after the interview with the major, and
many still think it. You can't really blame them, either.

In early 1952