Early in August, Ruppelt wrote a scathing attack on Blue Book’s current methods of analysis in a letter to Keyhoe. He described an officer in the Air Force Directorate of Intelligence as “taking the old ostrich approach to keeping his head in the sand, thinking they [UFOs] will go away. He is wrong.” The air force claimed they had gotten unknowns down to 10 percent, wrote Ruppelt
but from what I saw this is just due to a more skeptical attitude. The reports are just as good as the ones we got, and their analysis procedures are a hell of a lot worse.75
One wonders what the attitude must have been of the CIA personnel who handled the agency’s UFO reports. On July 25, the CIA reported a twenty-minute sighting of six UFOs, almost immobile, in southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) by a policeman and others. On August 4 came another CIA report from The Hague, Netherlands. In this instance, ten firemen and their chief saw two UFOs between 11 P.M. and midnight. It was a clear night, and the object was at a high altitude. It displayed “incredible speed, [and] at times remained motionless for as long as thirty seconds.” It appeared as a light-colored, flat oval, and in the opinion of the observers could not have been aircraft or balloons.76
Another UFO incident came from the Netherlands a few days later. Dutch newspapers reported that on August 7, Capt. Jan P. Bos of the SS Groote Beer saw a strange, flat, “moonlike” object rise out of the ocean, eighty or ninety miles east of Cape Cod. Through binoculars, he saw clearly illuminated ports on the rim. The object then moved at a “fantastic” speed. On August 6, people in Santa Fe, New Mexico, saw another fireball for fifteen minutes, a brilliant white ball in the sky that left a luminous trail. It apparently shot up and away. Lincoln La Paz said it was not a meteorite.77
Frank Edwards had announced UFO reports all year on his nationwide radio program. On August 11, 1954, his primary sponsor, the American Federation of Labor, fired him. According to AFL President George Meany, he failed to differentiate between news and his opinion. According to Edwards, Meany said, “because he talked too much about flying saucers.” Edwards said he had broadcast only seventeen “brief” UFO reports in all of 1954. Soon after, the Pentagon offered Edwards a job at $18,500, on the condition he be sworn to secrecy over the things he encountered. Edwards declined. His departure from national broadcasting was a serious blow to the cause of antisecrecy.78
AFR 200-2 DECLASSIFIED
On July 23, probably under air force pressure, the navy issued a new UFO directive which ordered immediate reporting of UFOs, using the code word “Flyobrpt.” Reports were to be phoned or teletyped to the following destinations: Director of Air Force Intelligence, ATIC, Commanding Officer of Air Defense Command, Commanding Officer of Eastern Air Defense Command, Director of Naval Intelligence, Commanding Officer of the Eastern Sea Frontier, and the Commandant of the Potomac River Naval Command. The directive cited JANAP 146, AFR 200-2, and two previous navy orders, OPNAV 3820 and Directive 3820.2 by the Commander of the Eastern Sea Frontier. It was intended to plug the leaks that were coming from navy and marine personnel. Although the directive was unpublicized, it was also unclassified. It thus threatened disclosure of AFR 200-2, which was still classified. As a result, the air force began work on a new version of AFR 200-2, one without the “restricted” label.79
Then, on the heels of the Edwards firing, Air Force Chief of Staff Nathan Twining declassified AFR 200-2 on August 12. Pentagon rumors had the navy forcing Twining’s hand. The public, to the extent that it cared, could now learn that Air Defense Command—not Blue Book—was responsible for UFO field investigations, and that Blue Book did not even get all the reports. Moreover, the air force admitted to legitimate interest in UFOs, which were “any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object.” The document stated that
interest in unidentified flying objects is twofold: first as a possible threat to the security of the United States and its forces, and second, to determine the technical aspects involved.
Just what were the “technical aspects involved”? The public would never know, as the air force would release information only about objects that were “positively identified as a familiar object.” Anything truly unconventional would not be discussed with the public.80
