Ancillary Mercy полностью

The telephone conversation made Keyhoe uneasy, and he decided to write an open letter to Ruppelt for NICAP’s June issue of the UFO Investigator. The letter, which listed many of Ruppelt’s past statements on UFOs, urged him not to let the air force trick him into falling into an untenable position that, in the end, would only damage his credibility. All was for naught. In December 1959, Frank Edwards obtained an advance copy of Ruppelt’s book. He called Keyhoe immediately about it. Ruppelt, said Edwards

rewrote the last three chapters. It’s absolutely incredible. Now he sneers at people he formerly labeled expert witnesses. He plays up the wildest contact stories—completely backs the air force policy line.... The writing doesn’t even sound like him. And he takes sarcastic cracks at serious investigators, especially NICAP and you.¹⁰⁵

This was not quite accurate. Ruppelt had not changed anything from his original book. What he had done was add three new chapters, each of which debunked the UFO phenomenon as explainable in conventional terms and ridiculous to take seriously. There was no “middle of the road” here, although he did try to maintain the pretense of objectivity by listing some interesting UFO sightings from the mid- and late 1950s. After that, it was all downhill. The new chapters offered a striking contrast to the detached and evenhanded account that characterized Ruppelt’s first edition.

After taking several cracks at “saucer fans,” Ruppelt directed snide remarks toward Keyhoe and NICAP. While the air force was conducting itself responsibly and scientifically toward UFOs, wrote Ruppelt, “Keyhoe and his hungry NICAPions ... wanted blood, and that blood had to taste like spaceships or they wouldn’t be happy.” Such a tone seemed truly incredible, but here was Ruppelt insulting an organization he nearly joined less than two years earlier. NICAP, far from being a detached organization interested in solving the UFO problem, merely “bombarded” busy congressmen and senators who had important work to do but were “polite enough to listen.” Ruppelt even smeared Keyhoe personally, repeating supposed rumors that he was accused of “minor social crimes” (“But personally I doubt this,” he explained). There was no air force secrecy over UFOs, emphasized Ruppelt. Instead, the air force wanted to keep the nuts at NICAP from rummaging through their files—which surely would result in “proof” that UFOs really were visitors from space.

Ruppelt emphasized the extremely high percentage of solved UFO cases. Directly contradicting statements he had made not long before in private, Ruppelt now repeated the standard air force line:

[M]ore manpower, better techniques, and just plain old experience has allowed the air force to continually lower the percentage of “unknowns” from twenty percent while I was in charge of Project Blue Book, to less than one percent today.

Ruppelt also spilled much ink on George Adamski and the Contactee movement, essentially lumping them together with serious UFO groups and throwing more discredit upon UFO researchers. He then offered his definitive conclusion that UFOs simply don’t exist. Ruppelt was “positive” about this. “There’s not even a glimmer of hope for the UFO,” he wrote.

Ruppelt easily explained many supposedly unidentified sightings. He debunked the ability of so-called experienced observers and used a number of authorities, including Hynek, to support his position. The Levelland sightings, which at the time prompted him to contradict the air force in public, now turned out to be exactly what the air force claimed all along: St. Elmo’s fire. Disregarding the McMinnville, Rouen, or Trindade photos, Ruppelt stated there was no shred of photographic evidence for UFOs “other than meaningless blobs of light.” The Lubbock Lights provided the coup de grace, as Ruppelt now explained them as “night-flying moths reflecting the bluish-green light of a nearby row of mercury vapor street lights.” He concluded in resigned fashion that, because of the fanaticism of saucer fans, the world was “stuck with our space age myth—the UFO.”¹⁰⁶