Ancillary Mercy полностью

Without bothering to investigate or even review the evidence, the air force entered the picture three days later, stating that Killian saw Orion through broken clouds. On the following day, an air force spokesman described some UFO observers as people “who can’t remember anything when they sober up next day.” Killian fired back strongly. The clouds, he said, were 3,500 feet below the plane. Also, he and the other witnesses saw Orion and the objects at the same time, repeatedly. Keyhoe asked Killian if he would tell this to a congressional committee. “I certainly would!” Killian replied. Meanwhile, American Airlines appeared to be backing Killian and reprinted the account in its magazine.

The air force’s vapid Orion explanation caused a loss of credibility. Therefore, on March 20, air force spokesman Lawrence Tacker officially retracted it. Instead of Orion, he said, the pilots had seen the wholly ordinary spectacle of B-47 bombers refueling in flight from a KC-97 tanker. The press ran this without comment or critique, and ridicule about “little green men” began to reach Killian. He did not take the comment lying down. “I don’t care what the air force says,” the New York media quoted him. He knew exactly what B-47s looked like during refueling, he said. He knew the KC-97 tanker and how many lights it had. He stated again that the objects “were at least three times the size of any tanker or bomber we have. They could travel at 2,000 mph. And they were not conventional aircraft.” It was unusual for an airline pilot to continue so brazenly to defy the air force. Ryan and Neff, only three years prior, had kept their mouths shut following an even more spectacular incident. But the arrogance of the air force had forced Killian to defend himself.

Killian’s defiant stance gave Keyhoe hope that a congressional investigation might come out of all this. As was too often the case, however, Keyhoe was overly optimistic. NICAP member Lou Corbin told him that Maryland Congressman Sam Friedel was “all set to hop on this Killian business.” Keyhoe began to plan for Killian to meet with Friedel and even to get Senator Barry Goldwater involved for a “red-hot press conference.” As planned, Corbin did meet with Friedel. Then, on March 27, Keyhoe learned from Killian’s wife that he had been silenced by the air force. According to Mrs. Killian, he was under strict orders not to “meet or talk with anyone about what he saw.” It so happened that Friedel had agreed to allow Killian to testify as part of a new congressional UFO investigation, but that Killian would have to make the first move; Friedel would not subpoena him. When Killian told a U.S. Senator that he would not risk losing his job by volunteering to testify, the issue became dead at once. Neither Senate nor House was willing to fight the air force. Soon after, the air force released this statement by Killian: “Having never seen night refueling of jets by a tanker, I suppose that could be what we saw.” Keyhoe was appalled but helpless.⁹²

Several intriguing UFO encounters were occurring overseas early in the year. Several of these were monitored by the CIA, such as an encounter from January 20 in Stigsjoe, Sweden. A craft twenty to twenty-five feet in diameter, surrounded by a glowing ring, approached a group of people at Lake Laangsjoen and was observed for three minutes. UFOs were seen in Britain, too. In January, a landing and paralysis incident was reported in Stratfordupon-Avon. ⁹³ On February 26, four witnesses at London Airport, including a traffic control officer, saw a UFO through binoculars. An RAF description reported: “Bright yellow light varying in intensity, about two hundred feet above the ground. Stayed in one position for about twenty minutes, then climbed away at great speed.” Vallee reported an incident that occurred in March in which Polish soldiers at the coast near Kolobreg noticed the sea becoming agitated. To their astonishment, a triangular object, each side about twelve feet long, emerged from the water. The object initially circled over the barracks, then zipped away. The CIA noted a UFO sighting involving a procession of bright bodies over Bergen, Norway, that took place on March 12. The next day several Australian witnesses had a ten-minute sighting of a dome-shaped object at a field a quarter mile away. It looked like a huge circus tent with flashing lights. As they approached, the object hovered, then took off at tremendous speed. Investigators from the Woomera Rocket range questioned one of the witnesses. At Australia’s Port Elliot on March 31, a man was driving home in the afternoon when he saw a glowing, reddish object with a row of portholes. The object was resting on the ground, was about twenty feet wide. The man drove around a wooded area in time to see it take off. The area was tested for radioactivity, and none found.⁹⁴