Page Content (OCR)
there w’as anything to it. And after a while I developed a kind of defiance— but this was not because of resistance to accepting UFOs as real. Instead, I was disturbed that something real was going on here and nobody seemed to be paying attention. Being naturally rebellious, I felt drawn to the challenge both to my own intellectual boundaries and to the limitations of conventional thinking. Awe and humility softened the more unnerving aspects of the discovery process, because the more I learned, the more convincing the whole thing became. Why should we assume we already understand everything there is to know, in our infancy here on this planet? My evolution took years, involving much reading, discussion with veteran researchers, review of government documents, and interviews with retired military officials and UFO witnesses. I think that most of us willing to consider this subject, even without this level of intensity, come to a point of transition, a decisive moment when we cross our own deeply ingrained internal barrier. It isn't easy. After all, we're dealing with something so far ungraspable: the essential nature of the UFO. We have to come to terms with the recurring appearance of something absolutely unknown and unexplainable by science, something that operates as if it were outside the boundaries of our physical world but in it at the same time. To make it even more difficult, we're burdened by the negativity and denial of the status quo that all of us have absorbed to one degree or another. To understand that aspect of the problem, we must come down to earth and look at the political and historical roots of the U.S. government's reaction to the UFO phenomenon, beginning at a time when officials first recognized that they were dealing with something not easily explained. Even if the phenomenon is psychologically hard to confront, that excuse is not enough to explain the inaction, the dismissal, and the ridicule that have been the norm for so many years. Why is there such a strong taboo against taking the subject seriously, when there's so much evidence for it? In fact, our government has a policy—a stated position of inaction crafted over fifty years ago—underlying its current approach to UFOs. Certain pivotal events set us on the unfortunate course we find ourselves on today. It all began in the late 1940s, when officials were faced with a sudden influx of UFO sightings in the skies over America, many of which were reported by highly credible observers such as military and airline pilots. Popular interest in UFOs (called "flying saucers" at the time, because of their frequently described flattened-disc shape) was growing as a result of national media coverage and the fact that nobody knew what they were or how to handle them. Initially, the authorities attempted to determine if the objects were either secret foreign aircraft, such as superior technology from the Soviet Union, or possibly some kind of newly discovered atmospheric or meteorological phenomena. By 1947, things were becoming uncomfortably clear behind the scenes. Lieutenant General Nathan Twining, commander of Air Force Materiel Command, a major command of the U.S. Air Force, sent a secret