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Incidentally, many of the 1897 reports refer to powerful beacons or searchlights with which the objects sprayed blinding light over the ground they passed. This is still another thing that turns up repeatedly in modern UFO reports. I do not doubt that someone was carefully flying over the United States in 1897, paying great attention to special isolated areas. We can lay out on the map the actual courses of some of these objects and find that they often flew an almost straight line over several towns on a given night until they reached a place where a landing was later reported. Meteorites and swamp gas don’t fit into these patterns. But neither do Martians and Venusians. Whoever was involved in these activities knew precisely what they were doing, and they set up a careful smokescreen to cover their real activities. They engineered much of the ridicule, confusion and disbelief that followed in their wake. By applying the techniques of what we now call psychological warfare, they managed to deceive a whole generation— and they’re still doing it. The operators of the wonderful 1896 airship(s) followed a careful plan which becomes transparent now that we are able to apply hindsight to the huge pile of newspaper reports. Here is a summary of the staged events, pieced together from many newspaper clippings of the period. Early in November 1896, before the California airship excitement had erupted, an impressive stranger visited the office of a prominent attorney in San Francisco named George D. Collins. This man, never identified in the numerous newspaper accounts, told Collins that he was the inventor of a marvelous new airship that operated on compressed air. He asked Collins to represent him and help him obtain a patent. The lawyer was shown detailed drawings of the invention and was duly impressed. The mystery man seemed intelligent and articulate, appeared to be in his late forties, was ‘‘of dark complexion, dark-eyed, and about 5 feet 7 inches in height and weighed about 140 pounds.”” He was described as being very well dressed and projected an aura of wealth. back, my wife and I watched one of these things for an hour just over that hill.”” He pointed to a high ridge visible from his office window. “Then it seemed to split into three...and all three of them took off like a herd of turtles.” Characteristically, the local press had not commented on the numerous sightings. The Grand Deception / 83 Patterns of Deception