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PREFACE xii involvement. Those who remained were the bit players, people who had seen or heard just a little. Another major handicap was the brilliant covering-up by the entire American government, quite possibly with the coopera- tion of other governments, including the disgracefully clever trick of creating an atmosphere in which anyone showing more than a casual interest in UFOs was made to look like a fool. And while this made investigation far more difficult than it should have been, it had the unintended positive effect of revealing the crashes to have been real events. Otherwise, why would the government have gone to such lengths to make them appear imaginary? The proof is out there, somewhere. If at least two men in- volved in the packing and transporting of wreckage are known to have taken souvenirs, one can assume that others helped themselves to small pieces of unknown material that might someday acquire great value. Some of the material has proba- bly been thrown away by relatives unaware of its true nature. Some of it, though, probably remains hidden away in attic trunks and little boxes and maybe even between the pages of unread books on a shelf. There are rumors that one or more of the archeology stu- dents who stumbled upon the Plains of San Agustin crash pocketed bits of material and later buried them in a cave. Or that a young man who lived near the Corona site picked up pieces over a period of months or years and hid them in a coffee can he kept in his private little cave. And then there is all the material, including bodies, recov- ered by the government. One shudders to think that any of it has been disposed of, and so it must be hidden somewhere. More than one person must know the details: where, by whom, and especially why.... This book is certainly not the end. It is merely the most recent step in the complex, frustrating, fascinating search for witnesses and evidence of one of the most amazing events in world history. The search will continue until the facts have been made public.