The list cited a number of UFO reports that had never been submitted to the Air Force for analysis. These included reports from foreign countries (one in Sumatra in 1944 and one Holland in 1952) and from NICAP’s private files. Others, such as the Kinross case ([p. 154]), had not been within ATIC jurisdiction. Many others, such as the Mantell ([p. 33]) and the Chiles-Whitted ([p. 108]) cases, had long ago been fully explained. Still other cases, dating from the early days of the saucer era, remain unsolved only because vital facts, not determined at the time of the sighting, are necessary to a full explanation but cannot now be ascertained. The request for a Congressional inquiry was denied but has been repeated at intervals.
The “Conspiracy” Fantasy
Most UFO organizations cling to the belief that a conspiracy exists to conceal the existence of extraterrestrial vehicles, but they disagree on its precise composition. To NICAP and its affiliates, the chief culprit is the Air Force, helped occasionally by other government agencies and by well-known civilian scientists. APRO (Aerial Phenomena Research Organization), however, considers that the Air Force is involved only as the tool of still more powerful forces. The director of APRO has published her conviction that nobody in the Air Force, the Navy, or the Marines “has the brains” to contrive so successful a scheme and that the alleged plot “could only be borne [sic] of minds schooled in deception and contraception [sic]—the elite corps of the Central Intelligence Agency.”[[XIII-8]] In still another version (which makes the plots of E. Phillips Oppenheim seem amateurish) NICAP itself is a pawn in a superconspiracy so vast that thousands of American citizens have been made its unknowing tools[[XIII-9]]. The hundreds of strange phenomena observed in the skies, the controversial photographs of UFOs, the “spacemen” who visited Adamski and others, the “contact” and little-green-men stories, the analyses made by the Air Force, the formation of the various saucer clubs, NICAP and its war against the Air Force—all these phenomena, events, and persons are allegedly parts of a colossal drama planned, supported, and staged as a deliberate hoax on the American public. The prime mover is supposed to be the Central Intelligence Agency, whose motive is to conceal—something; just what is not clear[[XIII-10]].
In comparison with this fantasy, NICAP’s charges of simple Air Force cover-up seem tame.
UFO at Sheffield Lake, Ohio
One of the most notorious accusations of Air Force skulduggery, made in attempts to procure a Congressional inquiry, was that embodied in a saucerian study of the Fitzgerald sighting[[XIII-11]], published by the UFO Research Committee of Akron, Ohio, which maintains a close relationship with NICAP. Although the case was unimportant and was completely explained, we shall discuss it in detail to illustrate the peculiar views and methods of the flying-saucer groups.
In summary, a strange light observed on a dark night for roughly half a minute by a drowsy housewife was converted into a weapon to attack the Air Force. The incident inspired thousands of words of argument, caused the publication and distribution of a lengthy document, used the time of busy investigators, required an otherwise unnecessary expenditure of public funds, and evoked an exchange of letters among angry citizens, harassed Congressmen, and equally harassed Air Force officials. In all UFO history, no larger mountain has ever been made from so small a molehill.
On September 30, 1958, the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base received a letter from Mrs. William Fitzgerald of Sheffield Lake, Ohio, reporting that on September 21 she had sighted a UFO which she would like to have investigated. She enclosed a three-page summary prepared by members of the UFO Research Committee of Akron, and added, “I assure you that I will contact my congressman about this matter if some action is not taken soon to explain it.”[XIII-12]
The alleged UFO had appeared at about 3 A.M. in the yard of the one-story, two-bedroom house occupied by Mrs. Fitzgerald and her husband. She had been sitting up alone watching television and had gone to bed at the end of the late movie. The bedroom window was shut and the window curtains were closed. Outside, the night was dark; the moon had set, there were no street lights, and none of the neighboring houses was lighted. Lying with her arm over her eyes, trying to get to sleep, she suddenly realized that the room was illuminated and stood up on the bed to look out of the window.
According to her account, a disk-shaped object with a hump in the middle, a dull aluminum in color, was moving across the yard at a height of about five feet. The object did not glow and did not have lights on it; she could not determine the source of the light that made it visible to her. About twenty to twenty-two feet in diameter and about six feet high, the UFO moved north across the driveway into a neighbor’s yard, losing altitude on the way until it was only one foot above the ground. At a distance of fifty feet, it stopped and floated motionless for several seconds while pink-gray smoke billowed out from two openings in the rim and illuminated the UFO. Each opening contained seven pipes. The smoke did not come from the pipes but from the openings from which the pipes projected. The object then moved back into the witness’s yard, rising to a height of five feet. No longer emitting smoke, it made two quick clockwise turns with a radius of about three feet, and rose straight up. The roof of the house, jutting out over the window, cut it from further view. During the entire time of the sighting, about thirty-six seconds, she had heard a muffled noise like that of a jet engine warming up. She had tried several times to waken her husband, by kicking him, but without success. When the object had gone, she went back to bed and slept.