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in the spring of 1966 I began a long series of treks that eventually took me through twenty states, where I interviewed thousands of people, hundreds of them in depth. Occasionally I encountered a publicity seeker or an outright liar like an aspiring science fiction writer in Maryland named Thomas Monteleone, but such people were easy to spot. The majority of the people I met were ordinary, honest human beings. Many were reluctant to discuss their experiences with me at all until I had won their confidence and assured them that I was not going to ridicule or slander them. Some had had such unusual and unbelievable sightings that they were afraid to recount them until they were certain that I would give them a sincere hearing. In my typical reporter fashion I only extracted information and gave little or none in return. I seldom let the witnesses know that other people in other sections of the country had told me identical stories which seemed to corroborate their own experiences. The details of many of these stories were unpublished and unknown to even hard-core UFO buffs. By maintaining this secrecy, I was able to make unique correlations that might not otherwise have been possible. As I traveled, I naturally visited local newspapers and spent time with the editors and reporters who had been handling the UFO reports in their areas. They were all competent newsmen, many with years of experience behind them, and when I met the witnesses whose stories they had written and published, I realized what a skillful and objective job they had done. So I developed a new respect for the clippings that were pouring into my mailbox. Most newspaper stories were reliable sources for basic informa- tion. Likewise, I found that most of the material being published by the various civilian UFO organizations had been carefully sifted and investi- gated to the best of their ability, even though some of these organizations did tend to over interpret their material, over speculate, and add the coloring of their own beliefs. They also had an exasperating tendency to delete reported details that they felt were objectionable or detracted from their ‘‘cause.”” Sadly, this is even more true today than it was in the 1960s. The few remaining UFO groups have become cults with strong religious over- tones, far more concerned with their petty feuds and vendettas than with the UFOs themselves. However, the witnesses, I concluded, have been giving honest descriptions of what they have seen, and their local newspapers have been giving objective accounts of what they reported. The nature and the meaning of what they saw is another matter. And the answer could not be found in newspaper clippings. However, it was The Secret War / 15