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Ironically, at 8 A.M. that very day, C. Phillip Lambert and Donny Russell Rose, both stable men with good reputations, were driving to work outside of Charleston, South Carolina, when they reportedly noticed a strange circular object spinning in the clear sky above the Southern Trucking Company terminal on Meeting Street Road. They stopped their car and watched the object for about eight minutes. “It looked like a sterling-silver disk,” Lambert said. ‘It was about fourteen feet tall and twenty feet in diameter. We just happened to look up into the sky; it was such a pretty day. I know we saw it; we were both wide awake, and neither of us drinks.” A veteran of eight years in the airborne infantry, Lambert estimated that the object was 800 or 900 feet above the ground when they first saw it. It appeared to be spinning rapidly and was constantly shifting from one position to another. Ce PEED Ot DDE PRO | Ls OO Se Ok PS DE DRE BS RE This was what ufologists call a Type I sighting—a low-level object observed and reported by reliable witnesses. March 30, 1966, was a flap date, and local newspapers from coast to coast carried dozens of other Type I sightings that day. Many of them involved police officers, pilots and other above-average witnesses. Weeks later, when all of the clippings and reports for that day had been collected by the author, we found that extensive sightings had also been reported in the following states: Michi- gan, New York (Long Island), Ohio, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Iowa, and other sections of South Carolina. This was a typical minor flap, and like most flaps, it received no national publicity, and none of the sightings was published outside of its place of origin. While all of this was going on, Secretary McNamara was blithely repeating the long-established Air Force line behind the closed doors at the House hearing. “People are beginning to attach significance to this matter,’’ Repre- sentative Gallagher told the Secretary that day. “There is no indication that they are anything other than illusions,” WAAR nanan ennenndand LinndL. McNamara responded blandly. How do you suppose those two men in South Carolina responded when they read that statement? For years now thousands of witnesses have been reacting with anger and bewilderment to the official pronouncements and explanations. The governmental attitude has succeeded in maintaining skepticism among those who have never seen a UFO and has helped foster the general disinterest of the press in the subject. As a result, most of the reported UFO activity has gone unnoticed, and the alarming scope of the phenomenon is unknown except to the relatively small handful of organi- Free Veer. eee te