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pseudoscientific speculation. (The UFO buffs have never distinguished themselves with their intellectual prowess. Most of them are sucked into the subject for purely emotional—repeat—emotional reasons.) Their growing beliefs were augmented by the appearance of the “‘contactees” — people who professed that they had actually met the UFO pilots and had even flown to other planets aboard the objects. Ironically, the UFO enthusiasts divided into factions over the contac- tee issue. Some accepted the contactees totally, while others rejected such stories and concentrated on trying to prove the reliability of witnesses and on the search for some kind of solid physical evidence that the UFOs were machines representing ‘‘a superior intelligence with an advanced technol- ogy.”’ Friction between these factions increased over the years and added to the burgeoning controversy. In the early years the Air Force was relatively free with UFO information, and Captain Ruppelt lent considerable support to Donald E. Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps major-turned-author, providing him with many official reports for his books and magazine articles. The Pentagon spokesman for Project Blue Book, Albert M. Chop, even went so far as to write the cover blurb for a Keyhoe book in 1953, stating: We in the Air Force recognize Major Keyhoe as a responsible, accurate reporter. His long association and cooperation with the Air Force, in our study of unidentified flying objects, qualifies him as a leading civilian authority on this investigation. All the sighting reports and other information he has listed have been cleared and made available to Major Keyhoe from Air Technical Intelligence records, at his request. The Air Force, and its investigating agency, Project Blue Book, is aware of Major Keyhoe’s conclusion that the “flying saucers” are from another planet. The Air Force has never denied that this possibility exists. Some of the personnel believe that there may be some strange natural phenomena completely unknown to us, but that if the apparently controlled maneuvers reported by competent observers are correct, then the only remaining explanation is the interplanetary answer. Ruppelt’s book describes how the Air Force investigators made a strenuous effort to fit their evidence into an extraterrestrial framework. In January 1953, a panel of top scientists and CIA officials reviewed this evidence and rejected it. Instead of grandly announcing that flying saucers from another planet were visiting us, the panel suggested that the public To Hell with the Answer! / 33 The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers