Page:Ruppelt - The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.djvu/230

 they weren’t convinced the UFO’s picked up on radars were weather targets.

But somehow out of this chaotic situation came exactly the result that was intended—the press got off our backs. Captain James’s answers about the possibility of the radar targets’ being caused by temperature inversions had been construed by the press to mean that this was the Air Force’s answer, even though today the twin sightings are still carried as unknowns.

The next morning headlines from Bangor to Bogota read:

AIR FORCE DEBUNKS SAUCERS AS JUST NATURAL PHENOMENA

The Washington National Sightings proved one thing, something that many of us already knew: in order to forestall any more trouble similar to what we’d just been through we always had to get all of the facts and not try to hide them. A great deal of the press’s interest was caused by the Air Force’s reluctance to give out any information, and the reluctance on the part of the Air Force was caused by simply not having gone out to find the answers.

But had someone gone out and made a more thorough investigation a few big question marks would have popped up and taken some of the intrigue out of the two reports. It took me a year to put the question marks together because I just picked up the information as I happened to run across it, but it could have been collected in a day of concentrated effort.

There was some doubt about the visual sighting of the “large fiery-orange-colored sphere” that the tower operators at Andrews AFB saw when the radar operators at National Airport told them they had a target over the Andrews Radio range station. When the tower operators were later interrogated they completely changed their story and said that what they saw was merely a star. They said that on the night of the sighting they “had been excited.” (According to astronomical charts, there were no exceptionally bright stars where the UFO was seen over the range station, however. And I heard from a good source that the tower men had been “persuaded” a bit.)

Then the pilot of the F-94C changed his mind even after he’d given the press and later told me his story about vainly trying to