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154 or even influence the press and scientists as long as their own were willing to do the government's work for it. And they were encouraged in their misguided efforts by the lunatic fringe of the private UFO community. Even the most open-minded re- porter was left quivering in fear for his reputation when as- sailed by some wild-eyed flying saucer evangelist insisting that even the least believable of UFO reports was "proof" that the aliens are here, and that at least one of them has been beaming messages of truth and beauty into his head. With scientists and reporters thus firmly in the government camp even if they didn't realize it, there were but two factions which possessed the potential for upsetting the status quo: private UFO investigators and those who operated the UFOs. Serious private investigators, even when grouped into asso- ciations, generally have been unable to make effective use of the often impressive evidence and analyses they have pro- duced. If most scientists won't back them up (or even pay them any attention) and the press won't take them seriously, how can they get their messages out? When a serious-minded private UFO group starts to capture the attention of the press, it can pose a significant threat to the official secrecy policy. In the mid-1960s, the National Investi- gations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) acquired considerable influence with the Washington press corps, often getting quoted ahead of official spokesmen. It was thus able to make the nation aware of some of the more glaring weaknesses in the government's handling of the UFO problem. But when the air force closed down its Project Blue Book in 1969, public interest and support dried up, and NICAP faded away. Despite the steady stream of detailed reports of close-up observations of radical craft having performance far beyond anything known or even theorized, there was no demand for a more objective look at UFOs from either journalists or scien- tists. The occasional faint call for a rethinking of the UFO evidence was overwhelmed by sarcastic denunciations from self-appointed protectors of scientific purity and by the ri- diculous headlines in the supermarket tabloids. CRASH AT CORONA