Page:Ruppelt - The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.djvu/13



Foreword

This is a book about unidentified flying objects—UFO’s—“flying saucers.” It is actually more than a book; it is a report because it is the first time that anyone, either military or civilian, has brought together in one document all the facts about this fascinating subject. With the exception of the style, this report is written exactly the way I would have written it had I been officially asked to do so while I was chief of the Air Force’s project for investi¬ gating UFO reports—Project Blue Book.

In many instances I have left out the names of the people who reported seeing UFO’s, or the names of certain people who were associated with the project, just as I would have done in an official report. For the same reason I have changed the locale in which some of the UFO sightings occurred. This is especially true in chapter fifteen, the story of how some of our atomic scientists detected radiation whenever UFO’s were reported near their “UFO-detecdon stations.” This policy of not identifying the “source,” to borrow a term from military intelligence, is insisted on by the Air Force so that the people who have co-operated with them will not get any unwanted publicity. Names are considered to be “classified information.”

But the greatest care has been taken to make sure that the omission of names and changes in locale has in no way altered the basic facts because this report is based on the facts—all of the facts—nothing of significance has been left out.

It was only after considerable deliberation that I put this report together, because it had to be told accurately, with no holds barred. I finally decided to do it for two reasons. First, there is