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One The Secret War On Wednesday, October 5, 1960, a formation of unidentified flying objects was picked up on the sophisticated computerized radar screens of an early-warning station at Thule, Greenland. Its exact course was quickly charted. It appeared to be heading toward North America from the direction of the Soviet Union. Within minutes the red telephones at Strategic Air Command headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, were jan- gling, and the well-trained crews of SAC were galloping to their planes at airfields all over the world. Atomic-bomb-laden B-52s already in the air were circling tensely, their crews waiting for the final signal to head for predetermined targets deep within the Soviet Union. SAC headquarters broadcast an anxious signal to Thule for further confirmation. There was no answer. Generals chewed on their cigars nervously. Had Thule already been hit? Suddenly the mysterious blips on the radar screens changed course and disappeared. Later it was learned that ‘‘an iceberg had cut the submarine cable”’ connecting Thule to the United States. It was a very odd coincidence that the ‘‘iceberg”’ chose that precise time to strike. But the mystery of unidentified flying objects is filled with remarkable and seemingly unrelated coincidences. World War III did not start that day. But it might have. Weeks later, when news of the enigmatic radar signals leaked out, three Labor members of the British House of Commons, Mr. Emrys-Hughes, Mrs. Hart and Mr. Swingler, stood up and demanded an explanation. The U.S. Air Force replied that the radar signals had actually bounced off the moon and had been misinterpreted. The story appeared in the Guardian, a leading newspaper in Manchester, England, on November 30, and a week later it was buried on page 71 of the New York Times. Could modern military radar really convert the moon into a formation of flying saucers? I have excellent reasons for doubting it. In May 1967,