Operation Trojan Horse - John Keel-pages

Page 144 of 287

Page 144 of 287
Operation Trojan Horse - John Keel-pages

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somewhere around the same time as the rocket reentry. Such reentries are usually visible for no more than five minutes. The objects quickly burn out in the atmosphere, a process that most often requires less than two minutes. This particular re-entry took place at approximately 9:45 P.M. on Sunday, March 3, 1968, so it could not possibly explain the numerous sightings made before and after 9:45-9:50 P.M. Dr. Hartman thus attempted to explain thousands of sightings by analyzing thirty that conformed to the rocket re-entry thesis. This same explanation has now been used by the Air Force for severa] other flaps, including the worldwide flaps of the summer of 1967. In July 1968, Walter Sullivan, the New York Times science editor, published a review of the March 3 sightings, using the rocket explanation and quoting the National Investigation Committees on Aerial Phenomena as claiming that there had been a sharp decline in UFO reports and no significant flaps for two years. Apparently NICAP had not heard of the massive waves in Pennsylvania, Georgia and New York State in the fall of 1967. All hell broke loose in South America again in 1968, with innumer- able landings, low-level sightings over major cities, and a wide variety of contacts. There was so much UFO news in June 1968 that some newspa- pers in Argentina had to relegate the story of Senator Robert Kennedy’s tragic murder to the inside pages, their front pages being devoted to flying saucers. Spain also experienced a monumental UFO wave throughout the summer of 1968. Hundreds of people reportedly saw strange formations of flying objects over Malaga, Madrid and the Balearic Islands. On September 8, 1968, a Spanish Air Force jet pursued a glowing pyramid- shaped thing over Madrid for sixty-five minutes, finally losing it at 50,000 feet. It was tracked on radar and photographed. On the night of Sunday, September 15, another one of our strange “meteors” appeared over the New England states, following the usual northwest to southeast course down from Canada. That week an enormous new flap erupted in the busy Ohio-West Virginia sector. Mrs. Mary Hyre, the Associated Press stringer in Point Pleasant, was inundated with hundreds of phone calls and sighting reports. She wrote only one news- paper article on the flap. In a telephone conversation that fall, she told me, “‘I’ve discovered that the less I write about these things now, the more people tell me what they’ve seen. Most of them don’t want any publicity at all, and if they think I’m going to write up their story, they shy away from telling it.” In Nova Scotia, four boys reported seeing a black circular object dive 142 / Operation Trojan Horse