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The Search Intensifies away by government agents were the substance of science fiction and a few extreme flying saucer magazines. Each report of a crash had died of starvation: Without any form of verification, there was nothing to keep it alive but a few indi- viduals' need to believe. For the vast majority of even those who were convinced that UFOs were real and quite possibly unearthly, the idea that some of them had crashed and been captured was going too far. The subject simply was not worthy of serious discussion. Then Leonard Stringfield came winging out of Cincinnati to drop his bomb at the July 1978 annual convention of the Mu- tual UFO Network (MUFON), a nationwide assembly of pri- vate UFO investigators, enthusiasts, and hangers-on. This particular meeting was held in Dayton, Ohio, not far from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, the home of the old Project Blue Book and the scene of so many rumors of alien bodies held in cold storage in the probably mythical Hangar 18. String- field's disclosures were made in an unusually tense atmo- sphere, following a telephoned threat on his life which the local police took seriously enough to warrant a shift in his hotel room and a lot of mysterious scurrying around. Len had been in the private UFO investigation game for Pes TO 1978 reports of crashed alien craft being spirited 41