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cal UFO propulsion. Donald Keyhoe volunteered to take it over and run it at his own expense. He quickly turned NICAP into another deranged hobbyist cult. Ray Palmer continued as the undisputed big cheese of American ufology, though, serving as the ruling force for over twenty years. For many years Al Chop, an Air Force information officer, lent his name to the board of governors of NICAP. But in 1966, he withdrew his name, and in personal correspondence and in appearances on radio programs he declared that he no longer accepted the idea that flying saucers were real, physical machines. He explained the turn of mind with the wry statement, “‘I used to believe in Santa Claus, too.” Many other early UFO investigators, most of them far above average in education and intellectual capacity, arrived at similar negative conclu- sions after long and careful independent study, usually adopting Sir Victor Goddard’s position (see below). Some, such as Dr. Donald Menzel, a Harvard astronomer, recognized that people were seeing something and had tried to explain the phenomenon within the restrictions of their own scientific disciplines. Dr. Menzel argued convincingly for a mirage and air-inversion theory. Two authorities well known to the UFO field, Ivan T. Sanderson, a noted biologist and anthropologist, and Dr. Jacques Vallee, a NASA astronomer and computer expert, studied the extraterrestrial theory for years and finally turned toward the paraphysical hypothesis. What exactly is the paraphysical hypothesis? It is the central theme of this book. It can best be summarized by the remarks of RAF Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard, KCB, CBE, MA, a very high-ranking member of the British government. On May 3, 1969, he gave a public lecture at Caxton Hall in London, in which he cited these main points: That while it may be that some operators of UFO are normally the paraphysical denizens of a planet other than Earth, there is no logical need for this to be so. For, if the materiality of UFO is paraphysical (and consequently normally invisible), UFO could more plausibly be creations of an invisible world coincident with the space of our physical Earth planet than creations in the paraphysical realms of any other physical planet in the solar system.... Given that real UFO are paraphysical, capable of reflecting light like ghosts; and given also that (according to many observers) they remain visible as they change position at ultrahigh speeds from one point to another, it follows that those that remain visible in transition do not dematerialize for that swift transition, and therefore, their mass must be of a diaphanous (very diffuse) nature, and their substance relatively etheric.... The observed To Hell with the Answer! / 39