What had happened? It appears that air force pressure succeeded when arguments failed. By late March, NICAP began a new campaign to open another government UFO investigation. This time it approached the Department of Justice, the National Security Council, the CIA, and the U.S. Army. Not surprisingly, it received rebuffs and denials.61
NICAP was stalled, but still trying. The organization obtained a formal statement in May 1958 from Dewey Fournet that confirmed (1) the 1948 Estimate of the Situation and (2) his own 1952 intelligence analysis of UFOs, which argued that they exhibited signs of intelligent control. Since the air force had been denying the existence of both of these documents, this was helpful to NICAP’s arsenal. Keyhoe learned that spring from a source that Gen. Nathan Twining, still chairman of the JCS, was concerned about UFOs, and about what to tell the public.62
There was reason to believe this was true. On April 9, 1958, the air force finally released parts of the Robertson Panel report, undoubtedly due in part to the pressure that Keyhoe’s television appearance had created. Why not seek an interview with Twining, thought Keyhoe. He wrote a letter to Twining and received an answer in May from Executive Officer Col. John Sherrill. Sorry, no interview, but Sherrill wrote cryptically:
No effective means have been developed for the establishment of communication by radio or otherwise with unknown aerial objects. The technical obstacles involved in such an endeavor, I am sure, are quite obvious to you.
Keyhoe’s letter to Twining reverberated in the Pentagon. In June, an air force officer met secretly with Keyhoe. The officer gave him three UFO reports, then warned him that the air force was going to ask him “for certain UFO information. Think it over carefully before you decide.” NICAP could be in trouble, the officer warned, and NICAP “must have something that has upset the Pentagon.” Two days later, an air force request did arrive. Keyhoe’s recent letter to Twining had indicated NICAP had files indicating intelligent maneuver by UFOs, and the air force wanted these cases. Keyhoe wondered, the air force already had
In June 1958, Richard Hall joined NICAP as an associate editor. Hall had been in the air force and, since that time, “had accumulated a large file of verified UFO evidence.” He impressed Keyhoe with connections to serious UFO investigators and soon established a prominent place for himself in NICAP, eventually as NICAP’s acting director in the 1960s.64
The Lackland AFB request reached an interesting point in late spring of 1958. On May 16, the base’s chief of education planning, Maj. Warren Akin, publicly suggested that UFOs were spacecraft. Then, in June, Keyhoe finally received word from the base. They had prepared a seventeen-page script based on a very straightforward interpretation of his book and conclusions. It even included the 1953 Kinross case, which involved the loss of an F-89 over Michigan in pursuit of a UFO, and a comment that rehearsals at the base were to begin immediately. The script itself stated that “the most logical explanation is that the saucers are interplanetary. This is the
Acting in the best interests of the public of the United States of America, the federal government in conjunction with the U.S. Air Force has carefully concealed information which was thought to be of danger because of the impending possibility of hysteria and panic which could result in an economic collapse and dissipation of our social structure.
Once again, Keyhoe was astonished. Why do this? he wondered. Baffled but interested, he approved the script, then did not hear another word from the base for six months, when the script was shot down without explanation. 65
RUPPELT IS TURNED
In June 1958, Ohio Representative John E. Henderson, after reading Edward Ruppelt’s
Ruppelt, however, proved to be a problem to the air force no longer. Already, on May 6, 1958, he had written to NICAP member George Stockey of his strong
