The Moore sighting was of exceptionally high quality, and the air force noticed it. After his encounter, Moore disappeared for a few days. When he returned, he refused to say where he had been, but eventually told his wife and friends that the air force had taken him to Washington, D.C. Much later, to a private UFO investigator, Moore stated that on November 10, the sheriff, deputy, and an air force officer appeared at his house and asked to take him to Youngstown, Ohio, for an interview with the military. Moore agreed, and the group first took him to the field where he saw the UFO, an unsettling experience for him. He then went by helicopter to Youngstown. A week later, an air force car with two officers returned; this time Moore was flown to Washington, D.C., for extended questioning (the flight stopped at Wright-Patterson AFB to exchange an officer). Moore was under constant observation while in Washington, and several groups of people interrogated him. They showed him slides and still photos of UFOs, and even presented a UFO movie film taken from inside a military aircraft. Moore was told the objects must be extraterrestrial, and signed a document swearing him to secrecy. He never tried to make his story public. His interviewer, C. W Fitch, got to know him well as an honest man involved in his church.41
On the morning of November 9, an Eastern Air Lines captain saw a large UFO hovering over Lafayette Airport in Louisiana. In his words, “the Air Defense Command in Baton Rouge was on the phone, waiting for our report, when we landed there.” During the evening of November 10 in Hammond, Indiana, hundreds of people saw a rocket-shaped machine race overhead. The police followed it, and the captain said a loud beeping sound blocked the radio reception; residents also reported radio and television failure as the UFO passed by. On the eleventh, airline passengers near Los Angeles saw an elliptical UFO below their plane.42
Another intriguing UFO event of this wave occurred on November 13, when an object exploded over the State Hospital at Crownsville, Maryland. Burned pieces of metal fell on hospital grounds, were checked for radiation, and confiscated by army intelligence officers from Fort Meade. The materials were said to be relayed to Air Research and Development in Baltimore, where an ARD colonel told NICAP member Lou Corbin he had no idea what the metal was. From there, at least some of the material was flown to ATIC, although ATIC’s deputy director denied ever hearing about it. Fort Meade was the site of the NSA’s headquarters.43
Despite the density of sightings and nature of the reports, the Blue Book investigation consisted of one man from the 1006th who took two trips to question witnesses (ignoring the majority of them), stated incorrectly that lightning had been in the area at the time, and blamed it all on weather. On November 14, the air force explained the Levelland case as ball lightning, the Stoke report as a hoax inspired by the Levelland case, and the Sebago case as caused by confused radar men who mistook ordinary plane blips for a UFO. Menzel supported the air force conclusions and added that the wave of sightings was “tied in with the sensitization of people to the Sputniks.” The Levelland case was a mirage, he said, and the stalled car merely the result of a nervous foot on the accelerator. An FBI report from November 12 also adhered to the Sputnik theory, noting the “great increase in the number of flying saucers and other UFOs” reported by people across the country.44
The air force also issued another fact sheet titled “Air Force’s 10-Year Study of Unidentified Flying Objects.” This denied the existence of flying saucers, emphasized the absence of a threat to U.S. security, and claimed an unidentified rate of 2 to 3 percent.
Not everyone lined up to agree with these conclusions. A journalist friend of Keyhoe read the air force list of explanations of UFOs. When he came to “large Canadian geese flying low over a city at night, with street lights reflecting from their bodies,” he asked, “Don, how dumb do they think people are?” “You should see the full list,” Keyhoe answered.45
Edward Ruppelt entered the picture, taking issue with Donald Menzel’s conclusions about Levelland. A mirage, he said, was not the answer. “There is sufficient evidence of flying saucer existence to warrant further investigation,” he told reporters. Moreover, Ruppelt said, Blue Book had received several electrical interference reports when he was chief. He urged the air force to “stop playing mum.” Lincoln La Paz also reversed his judgment of the Levelland and Stokes sightings, which he initially said were caused by fireballs. In the midst of the wave, he stated his belief that they were not fireballs or celestial phenomena.46
The press reported general perceptions not in accord with the air force line. A November 7, 1957, article from the
