Page 31 of 82
Levine informed Condon that he had spoken with someone at Maritime Command, the Canadian navy's eastern headquarters in Halifax. They felt that something had gone into the water but at that time had no idea what it was. A search had turned up nothing that was relevant. A call to RCMP headquarters in Ottawa indicated that they felt the search had been thorough and there would be no point to further investigation. That pleased Dr. Condon, who figured that was enough to give him an excuse to close out this one. Dr. Levine informed Condon that Jim Lorenzen of APRO had called claiming they had received dozens of letters about the crash and that the Canadian navy was still searching out there. There were even newspaper stories. Some local residents said they had witnessed the recovery of debris. He thought another call to the Canadians might be in order. Despite this Condon told him to class it as unexplained. Dr. Levine was upset by what seemed to be an arbitrary decision. There had been some disagreements on the committee over Dr. Condon's handling of the information on earlier cases. Accusations were being made that unscientific methods had been used to explain away what, in some cases, could not be explained. Some had gone so far as to resign from the committee, refusing to have their names connected to the report. Condon, during a speech at the Corning Glass Works on January 25, 1967, stated that "it is my inclination right now to recommend that the government get out of this [UFO investigating] business. My attitude right now is that there is nothing to it. But I'm not supposed to reach a conclusion for another year." This did little to instill confidence in the UFO community that this would be a serious and unbiased study. Dr. David R. Saunders, a highly placed and respected member of the committee, already believed the government was covering up the real evidence surrounding the UFO mystery. Condon's remarks at Corning only served to reinforce Saunders's suspicions that the study was being used as a way for the military to get out from under UFO investigations. There is no doubt that something extraordinary happened in Shag Harbor on that cool, clear evening in October of 1967. There was no doubt in the minds of those in the Canadian military, or of the residents and fishermen of that little village. No one in the American military doubted it either. Americans were keenly interested in UFOs spotted over Canada, because they might be missiles taking a stealthy path toward the U.S. There was no doubt in the mind of Harold Shea, editor of one of the oldest and most respected newspapers in Canada, The Halifax Chronicle Herald, which ran the story on the front page with headlines two inches high - no small commitment for a newspaper as conservative as this one. And there were the wire services that picked up the story and spread it around the world, reporting that a UFO had crashed and sunk in the narrow channel at the southern approach to Shag Harbor in Nova a Scotia. would give him no peace. In this case, though, Condon's preordained conclusions would prevail for nearly thirty years. The Royal Canadian Navy sent their Fleet Diving Unit to the site in an attempt to find evidence of