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the Midwest took place in 1897. There’s something else going on here. If secrecy is ‘‘their’’ goal, then both our newspaper wire services and our government have happily been obliging them. What are the reasons? And, more important, what are the pitfalls? If strange unidentified flying machines are operating freely in our midst, I wonder if we can really accept what Secretary of Defense McNamara told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on March 30, 1966: “‘I think that every report so far has been investigated,” he said. ‘“‘And in every instance we have found a more reasonable explanation than that it represents an object from outer space or a potential threat to our security.” The newspapers of March 9, 1967, quoted Dr. J. Allen Hynek as dismissing a number of the March 8 sightings as being the planet Venus. But I worry about the report of two Erie, Pennsylvania, policemen, William Rutledge and Donald Peck, who said they watched a strange light over Lake Erie for two hours on Wednesday, August 3, 1966. It appeared as a bright light when they first noticed it at 4:45 A.M. It moved east, they said, stopped, turned red, and disappeared. A moment later it reappeared and was now a bluish white. They watched it until 6:55 A.M. As the sun came up and dawn flooded the sky, the object ceased to be a mere light. It became a definite silvery object, possibly metallic, and finally it headed north toward Canada and disappeared. Could all of these other strange lights in the sky also be silver metallic objects when viewed in daylight? If so, then we can forget about all of the theories of swamp gas, meteors, plasma and natural phenomena that have been bandied about by the skeptics for the past forty years. It took many years to collect and tabulate all the sightings of the 1960s. The great wave ran from 1964 to 1968 and involved nearly every country on earth! Many millions of people were directly affected. Thou- sands of photographs were taken (most of them were of meaningless blobs). There’s no way to count the many books that were inspired by the wave and published in every language. Innumerable songs were written about the coming of the UFOs. Some became huge hits. Scores of expensive motion pictures on the subject were inflicted on movie audi- ences for years after. Flying saucers have become a part of our culture. Several countries such as Japan, France, Great Britain, Spain and Argen- tina, have regular glossy magazines devoted to UFOs and the many myths and legends they have inspired. Presidents and Prime Ministers are listed among the witnesses, along with most of the British Royal family. It is even fashionable to be a UFO percipient today. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a number of 24 / Operation Trojan Horse