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"Negative. These were all locals," he answered. "And when I say locals,’ I mean our pilots stay in the local area on local missions. They don't go anywhere else." He paused for a short laugh. "Maybe it's a security situation that nobody's telling us about? Or telling anyone else for that matter." He paused again to indulge in a laugh. "Either it's a top security deal - or somebody's fibbing about those helos!" Station. His response was: "Ten or 12 jet aircraft? That sounds silly. At night what would they expect to find - even if they were orbiting the area? They couldn't see enough of the terrain to make out anything. With the choppers, it's different. They can hover, use searchlights and so forth. But this base has never had seven choppers. And I've been here since October 1964. We have one squadron, about four or five choppers. But the Coast Guard also has a few based here separately." So I checked with the Coast Guard's Office of Public Information in New York City and spoke with Seaman Tom Hester. "Well, we don't have that many helicopters in this area," he said. "But hold on and I'll check it out." He went to the Search and Rescue (SAR) Dairy and after five minutes told me: "Checked our SAR Diary from October 10th to the 13th for 1966, just to be sure, and there's no mention of anything for that area. No choppers were dispatched to the Wanaque area for any reason." The SAR Diary, it should be explained, is a running daily record of Coast Guard search and rescue operations. The daily records are not discarded each year, but are preserved over many years through the past. At the Civil Aeronautics Board, I first checked with Ed Slattery, an old friend who is Public Affairs Officer for the Bureau of Safety in the CAB Headquarters, Washington, D.C. Ed searched through his voluminous files and could find nothing unusual for October 11, 1966, in the way of accidents or missing aircraft. "Of course," he said, "we don't keep a file on every little privately owned aircraft that's been involved in an accident. There were five thousand such accidents in 1966 alone. But to bring out that many search aircraft - 10 or 12 jets and seven helicopters - there would have to be a major aircraft disaster." He added that so many search aircraft over the Wanaque Reservoir - if they were search aircraft - would have been ordered out by the New York City Regional CAB Office of the Bureau of Safety, since the Wanaque area was in its province. "And," he said, "that Regional Office sometimes takes much longer than the three months they're supposed to take to send in a report to me. You might try them when you're back in New York." I tried them a few days later. The CAB Bureau of Safety New York Regional Office is located at the JFK Intel national Airport in Long Island. The girl who takes care of the files checked the records back from October 11 to October 1, 1966 - "to be absolutely certain," she said. Then she told me: "There's nothing. Just nothing. No accidents. And I'm sure the Board would be in on it if there was anything." The General Aviation District Office of the Federal Aviation Agency at the Teeterboro Airport in New Jersey has the Wanaque area under its jurisdiction. I tried them too. There I spoke with Mr. A.T. Worth, FAA Operations Inspector. He said: "I don't remember any commotion around here on that Next I talked with Commander Tom Williamson, Public Affairs Officer at the Floyd Bennett Naval Air