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days in June 1956. Everybody attended: most of the top CIA officials, the German rocket scientists who would later achieve great fame with our NASA program, and leading aviation industrialists such as William Lear of Lear Jets. They decided to establish a civilian UFO organization to be called the National Investigation Committees on Aerial Phenomena (NI- CAP). A physicist named Townsend Brown was named to head it. Charter memberships cost $100, a great deal of money in 1956. It seemed as if something was finally going to be done. There are other examples of sensible researchers who tried to pene- trate the thunder of the UFO enthusiasts and reach the lightning. In 1954, Wilbert B. Smith, superintendent of Radio Regulations Engineering, Department of Transport, Ottawa, Canada, became the head of a semi- official Canadian UFO study dubbed Project Magnet. Smith had fine credentials, and the UFO enthusiasts were thrilled with the an- nouncement. But as the years passed, Smith began to realize that the quickest way to the source of the problem was through a study of the contactees. In some cases the UFO “‘entities’’ had actually passed on scientific information that Smith was able to check and confirm in his laboratory. Toward the end of his life (he died of cancer on December 27, 1962), he gave lectures and wrote papers about what he had learned. “T began for the first time in my life to realize the basic oneness of the universe—science, philosophy, and all that is in it,’ he remarked in 1958. ‘‘Substance and energy are all facets of the same jewel, and before any one facet can be appreciated, the form of the jewel itself must be perceived.” Ain censor To bhAn Asteneneenn: teinl baling. As usual, the extraterrestrial believers thought their scientist had gone crackers. They didn’t want to hear about philosophy and energy. They wanted to discuss Venusians and the Air Force plot to hide the truth. It is unfortunate that a large part of Smith’s papers and findings are still unpublished and undiscussed. Another engineer, a graduate of Yale and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, became interested in flying saucers in 1953. Upon his retirement in 1954, he and his wife toured the country interviewing UFO witnesses and, inevitably, contactee claimants. His name is Bryant Reeve. Like the rest of us he began with the hope and expectation of finding evidence for the extraterrestrial hypothesis. He thought in the same physical terms of all engineers and scientists. But as he plunged deeper and deeper into this complex subject, he reached into philosophy and metaphysics just as Smith had. Finally, in 1965, he published a book called The Advent of the Cosmic Viewpoint. After long and careful To Hell with the Answer! / 37