Strangers From The Skies - Brad Steiger-pages

Page 115 of 128

Page 115 of 128
Strangers From The Skies - Brad Steiger-pages

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"Now the tactic has changed," according to Keyhoe's article. "The tactic is total suppression of news. By a strict Air Force order, entitled AF 200-2, Air Force personnel are forbidden to talk in public about UFO sightings, and information about UFO's is to be withheld from the press unless the thing seen ‘has been positively identified as a familiar or known object.'" Although Keyhoe acknowledges that indirect pressure can be exerted on employees of companies working on defense projects and other areas subject to government control, the retired Marine Corps major has never allowed himself to be restrained by any Air Force edict. In the True article, Keyhoe accuses the Air Force of censoring several items which the public has deserved to know. Among them: Four "spacecraft of unknown origin" cruised up to the two-man Gemini space capsule on April 8, 1964 when it was on its first orbit, inspected it, then blasted off; on January 10, 1961, a UFO flew so close to a Polaris missile that it botched up the radar for 14 minutes; a possible "recharging" operation of UFO's near Canberra, Australia on May 15, 1964. On March 28, 1966, after the saucer "flap" in Michigan, Keyhoe was once again repeating his charges that "the Pentagon has a top level policy of discounting all UFO reports and over the past several years has used ridicule to discredit sightings." On Wednesday, March 30th, spokesmen for the Air Force called a press conference to insist that they kept an open mind about UFO's and to deny any "hushing" of saucer reports. In the case of the recent Michigan sightings, a spokesman said, "marsh gas was pin-pointed as the source of colored lights observed by a number of people." At about the same time as the Air Force press conference, three space scientists called their own press meeting at a convention in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Paul A. Campbell, a pioneer in space medicine, expressed his belief that UFO's are "all in the minds of those who report seeing them." Dr. John S. Hall, an astronomer at Lowell Observatory in Arizona, felt that tourists from outer space would "certainly have more sophisticated tastes than the sightings indicate."