Page Content (OCR)
"Well, they bothered me so much after a while that I dedicated some real time to tracking them. You know, sometime after our marriage and the publication of the second book, I was on the roof of the house putting up t.v. antenna and one of those menacing black Hueys popped out of nowhere from beyond the trees and damn 1 14 coat on "Yes," Betty said, "they have the most uncanny way of just showing up like that, as if they know what you're doing or even saying, and just where you're going to be." "I went around, called and wrote to all the different government agencies," Bob continued, "established at least that they seemed to be of a few recurring types, Hueys or Sikorsky Hawks but at any rate ours, not some foreign power's and not some ‘alien' camouflage design. But every agency I contacted, every post or military base 1 went to and every division of the services disclaimed direct knowledge of, or participation in, any of these unmarked harassments; each would always refer me to the other, passing the buck to the next branch. "Well, it turned out after enough persistence and coming back and just not giving up, that I was able to extract some 'technicalities' without anyone getting really specific, or owning up to the activity themselves. It seems that these choppers weren't exactly 'unmarked', technically; and though they don't conform to standard 21M sa military description with their totally black appearance, I had to be 'informed' at least to the degree that they showed knowledge about any such presences in our airspace—you know, showed they weren't remiss in their vigilance about what went on within the country's borders by being ignorant regarding some species of craft often—enought reported! So I was informed rather nonchalantly that these birds aren't unmarked, but actually have scarcely visible regulation markings on their underside only just airbrushed over a little. What they were, or why they were made so deliberately illegible, wasn't of course offered." "Oh yes. Finally, at one base I'd been to many times before, I was taken informally aside and just told, very bluntly and matter—of-— factly, that these birds are never flown by military personnel; they are kept at military bases, but it's the CIA that flies them. The CIA can just walk into any base, any time, and commandeer whatever equipment they want. It's a standard procedure. They're the ones that fly them." "That still doesn't explain to me how they manage to be so—uncanny," Betty interjected, addressing her remark to Bob as much as to MT. "The way they show at the moments of incredible timing is just—supernatural." Betty was quite without exaggeration there—although most people, lacking similar experience, upon hearing her would naturally assume hyperbole. Just as she went on about how their infernal racket would burst overhead quite suddenly, and without the expected grace of a preliminary introduction through graduated rumbling from the distance, so MT was quite aware of the m.o. himself; the introduction of their presence was unmistakable and easily distinguishable from the flyover of random craft, due to the discontinuous explosion of their propeller—blades at a range so abruptly close that the experience was more like turning on a t.v. than detecting the approach of a plane in conventional airspace. And, just as Betty insisted there was nothing random in their sudden show but that it always coincided much too perfectly with a crucial telephone call, the discussion of a sensitive subject or performance of some task quite apposite to her UFO link, so MT had recognized as well the impeccable timing that was every bit as much an identifying signature as the noise itself. (At the convention Ed Conroy, who discussed the Whitley Strieber case as author of Report on Communion, would also remark on the 'copter phenomenon that eerily coincided with his deeper involvement in the "spacebcing" issue.) Students of Southern Crown were aware by now of the phenomenon, since it occasionally punctuated the sensitive subject—matter of a lecture—thereby depositing itself to the evidence of posterity on tape. 114 T-Bird_Vs_The_Flying_saucers.htm near knocked me off the roof!" "Did you ever find out more about them?"