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Edward J. Ruppelt, former head of Project Bluebook, suffered a fatal heart attack, allegedly shortly after he read a borrowed copy. Robert Loftin, UFO author, who also died prematurely, was another rumored owner of the book. Of course, except for the deaths, thus is purely hearsay, and, if true, could have been the result of coincidence. Regardless of the motivation behind printing the Annotated Edition, neither Varo nor the military could foresee the zeal of civilian UFO research in its probing of the matter. Intrigued by the mystery, and questioning the untimely death of Jessup, Ufologists began delving. At least two national magazine articles explored Jessup's death and his connection with the book. Our personal involvement with the mystery surrounding Jessup began after we heard of his suicide and began looking into rumors involving the above matters. Our findings became the basis for a book, The Strange Case of Dr. M.K. Jessup, published in 1963 by Saucerian Books, and reprinted in 1965 and 1967. The book contained a chapter about The Annotated Edition and reproduced the Preface with annotations, though not in facsimile. The Preface was provided by Riley Crabb of the Borderland Sciences Research Associates Foundation, Inc. Our interest continued, though we had never seen an actual copy of The Annotated Edition, and often doubted that it really existed. One of our correspondents claimed to possess the complete volume in photocopy form and sent us second generation copies of a few pages to prove his point. Brad Steiger provided miniature reproductions of three actual pages to illustrate an article, "Fantastic Key to the Flying Saucer Mystery," in Saga magazine, November, 1967. He noted that the reproductions were from a microfilm copy owned by Stephen Yankee. We finally acquired one of the rare original copies in 1971 from a friend of the late Mr. Jessup, to whom he had given one of the few copies supplied him by its publisher. Observing the clarity of the printing and the good physical condition of our copy we began exploring the idea of a facsimile reprint. | am president of a small publishing company, Saucerian Press, Inc., which specializes in limited editions of works pertaining to unidentified flying objects. Sales of these books rarely exceed 2,000 copies, and the main purpose of the publisher is to provide distribution for works, sales of which do not warrant general trade publication. Publishing a facsimile of The Annotated Edition would present problems. It contained about twice the number of pages of our usual publications; it demanded expensive separation negatives and printing, and its appeal would be much more limited than our usual books. It would demand a run of no more than 500 copies and would have to sell at a relatively high price. While prudence urged that the idea be dropped, two overwhelming considerations urged us on. The original edition of The Case For the UFO had long been out of print, was becoming very rare among antiquarian dealers. The Annotated Edition was almost legendary, surrounded by excessive mystery and controversy, and unavailable to serious students of the UFO mystery, either in libraries or by their own personal acquisition. In July 1972, Saucerian Press made the positive decision to publish this edition. We have reproduced the original as faithfully as possible, within the photo-mechanical means available to us. The body of the facsimile edition begins with the Introduction on the following page. No information as to the authorship of this Introduction is given in the original. It is, however, competently done, helps to explain what is to follow and comments further upon the arrangement of the volume. In our original copy the Appendix is bound between the original Introduction to Jessup's text and Part One of the body of the book. While this could be a mistake in binding, the Appendix, consisting of the two Allende letters, does help set the tone and scene for The Annotated Edition and most likely was bound there on purpose. Not having a second coy for comparison, we have included the Appendix at the same place, even though this represents a radical placement. Our Personal Involvement The Facsimile Edition