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79 What the disk is is another matter. The Army isn't telling its secrets yet, from all appearances when this was written. Maybe it's a fluke and maybe it isn't. Anyone's guess is pretty good at the moment. Maybe the thing is still a hoax, as has been the belief of most folks from the start. But something has been found. The announcement from Eighth Air Force Headquarters by General Ramey that the flying disc was just the radar reflector from a weather balloon effectively killed the story. Most people—especially those in military-dominated areas like New Mexico—were in awe of the government and eager to accept its words. If the USAAF said it was a radar reflector, then who was to disagree? After all, hadn't some of those men carried us to glorious victory in World War II just two years ee ce earlier? But a lot of people knew the wreckage was not part of any weather balloon, or anything else familiar. Some were civil- ians, not under military control, who could legally spill the beans and leave the government in a very awkward position. Of the newsmen who had seen and probably handled pieces of wreckage obviously unrelated to balloons, all were employees of radio stations. Thinly veiled telephone threats from Wash- ington, aimed at convincing them their station's FCC licenses were in jeopardy if they ever spoke out, worked as planned. Other threats came from what witnesses recall as the office of New Mexico Senator Dennis Chavez, and former Senator and current Secretary of Agriculture Clinton A. Anderson. While similar extralegal behavior on the part of government officials in the 1990s could well produce the opposite result, in 1947 Washington was able to exercise frightening power over a sup- posedly free, independent press. Rancher Mac Brazel and his family were neither in the em- ploy of the government nor in need of government approval to work. The technique applied in Mac's case was more direct and at least as illegal: He was taken into custody for about a week, during which time he was persuaded to change his story. It can be assumed that some combination of threats, bribes, and ap- CIVILIANS FIND THE WRECKAGE