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Forrestal after all who was the only person in the cabinet who could have spoken to Truman that bluntly just a little over two years after the man had inherited the office from FD Rand was already a very unpopular president. "It's like this, "| had heard President Truman was told. "We're in a real pickle here. Nate Twining says he doesn't know what the hell this thing is except that if the Soviets get a hold of it, it'll change the shape of things to come for sure." "General Twining says he'd rather do it as a briefing, sir, for the time being, " Admiral Hillenkoetter suggested. "For your ears only. Then we have to have a working task group to manage this whole issue. " Maybe the working group, whatever it was going to be called, would come up with a report analyzing the situation as soon as they reviewed what General Twining was putting under lock and key at Wright field, but nobody wanted to speculate until they knew what was there. "Maybe you should sit down with General Twining first, " both Forrestal and Hillenkoetter suggested. They knew that Harry Truman liked to get first hand reports from people who had seen the situation with their own eyes. FDR was corporate and knew how to digest reports. He trusted his subordinates. But Truman was different. He knew how to run a haberdashery store; if a hat didn't fit he'd have to go back to the factory to find out why. It was the same with General Twining, who'd been at the crash sites himself. If Tuman wanted answers, he'd have to see it through the eyes of someone who'd been there. Forrestal and Hillenkoetter explained that they wanted the President to hear what General Twining had to say and then convene a group of military, civilian, and intelligence personnel with strong old school ties of trust for one another. In this way whatever decisions they made wouldn't have to be memoed all over the place, thus tisking the possibilities of leaks and tip-offs to the Soviets. "We don't want the newspapers or radio people getting their hands on any of this either, " they told the President. "Winchell would crucify me with this if he found out what we were doing, " Truman was reported to have said at that meeting. Nobody in the know liked President Truman very much, and he could appreciate it. "It's just like the Manhattan Project, Mr. President, " Admiral Hillenkoetter reminded him. "It was war. We couldn't tell anyone. This is war. Same thing. " Then they explained that after they had convened a working group, they would task out the research of the technology while keeping it from the Soviet spy machine already operating at full bore within the government. "Create a whole new level of security classification just for this, "the Central Intelligence director said. "Any information we decide to release, even internally, we down grade so the people getting the information never have the security clearance that allows them all the But the President was still thinking about the difficulties of keeping an operation this far reaching out of the news, especially when flying saucers had become one of the hottest new items to talk about. What was he supposed to say when people ask the government about the flying disk stories? he asked, pressing for details that still had to be established. How could they research these strange creatures without the news getting out? And how could they analyze the wealth of physical material Hillenkoetter had described to him without bringing people from outside government? President Truman simply didn't see how this government within a government camouflage idea could work without the whole thing spinning out of control. Despite Forrestal's assurances, the president remained skeptical. "And there's one final point, " Truman was said to have brought up to his Central Intelligence group director and secretary of defense. It was a question so basic that its apparent naivete belied an ominous threat that it suggested was just over the horizon. "Do we ever tell the American people what really happened?" There was silence. Don't ask me how | know. My old friend and enemy from the KGB wouldn't tell me how he knew, and | didn't press him. But, accept it as fact from the only source that could know, just as | did back when | was told, that 30 "You fellas going to write up some report for me?" the President asked. "Does he know what these SOBs are after?" Truman asked, referring to the aliens in the crashed saucer. "That's one of the questions we want to address, " they said. "How do you plan to do it?" "We hide it from the government itself, " the secretary explained. way to the top. The only way to hide it from the Russians is to hide it from ourselves. "