Word on Project Ozma leaked sufficiently that by early 1960, Struve announced that Ozma was an attempt to establish communication with intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations. Then, at 4 A.M. on April 8, 1960, Project Ozma’s radio telescope at Green Bank, West Virginia, focused on the star Tau Ceti and received a powerful signal. In Drake’s words, the signal “knock[ed] the needle off the dials” for five minutes. It seemed amazingly quick to receive an intelligent signal from outer space, yet it appeared to be so. Then, two weeks later, after repositioning the telescope, the signal reappeared. This gave strong support to the idea that the signal had been terrestrial, most likely from a nearby and extremely powerful transmitter. The Naval Research Laboratory later revealed that its staff had been listening to these same signals for the past six months. It is curious that they were unable to determine the source. The best guess is that the NSA ran the transmitter, as it happens to have a major facility at Green Bank. Drake himself later said that he “never really knew what we made contact with that first day.”
What we do know is that by 1961, Project Ozma was washed up, and Struve reversed his earlier statements on the project’s importance. “Come back in a hundred years,” he told reporters. Actually, however, the project did not die, as Struve implied; it simply moved to Arecibo, Puerto Rico.121
THE U-2 AFFAIR: A PEEK DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE
On May 1, 1960, CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down in a U- 2 over the Soviet Union. This was the first time in five years of overflights that anything like this had occurred. Quite serious, indeed, and no announcement appeared while both governments were determining just what to do. On May 5, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that the plane had been shot down. He made no mention of Powers. The U.S. State Department confidently replied that the plane was not a spy plane; rather, it was a NASA weather plane that had drifted over the border from Turkey when its pilot had oxygen trouble. Sorry about the confusion. State was able to lie so confidently because it knew Powers had been instructed, in case of trouble, to eject from the plane and blow it up with a remote-control device. They did not know that Powers had not activated the mechanism. After letting this story sit for two days, Khrushchev triumphantly revealed that he had both pilot and plane. Whoops. The State Department now admitted to the spy flight (what else could it do?) but maintained that it had not been authorized in Washington. This was weak, and everyone knew it. Therefore, on May 9, Eisenhower reversed the State Department position, took full responsibility for the U-2 flight, and issued a statement that was widely interpreted to mean that the flights over Soviet territory would continue. Khrushchev, indignant, stormed out of a much-heralded summit conference.122
Khrushchev played the U-2 affair exceedingly well, but none of this changed American policy. Here is a snapshot of mid-1960. In May, the CIA sponsored the covert arrival of the first Cubans in Guatemala and soon built a secret airstrip. The U.S. Ambassador was generally aware of the operation, but stayed clear since it was black. Meanwhile, the CIA was deeply involved in the elections of the former Belgian Congo, newly independent. The Congo had the misfortune to be the site of some of the world’s richest mineral deposits, including high-grade uranium. It was therefore a universal target of domination, a game won by the Americans. In June, the CIA began providing arms to the anti-Trujillo underground in the Dominican Republic. In July, it made a payment to arrange for an “accident” to Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother. In August, the agency’s Office of Medical Services poisoned cigars destined for Fidel. Meanwhile, J. Edgar Hoover assiduously recorded JFK’s reckless womanizing at the Democratic convention, and may have fed this information to his friend Lyndon Johnson to use for blackmail purposes against Kennedy, perhaps even to influence JFK’s choice of a running mate.123
MID-1960: NICAP PRESSES CONGRESS ONCE AGAIN
While 1960 was a busy year for the covert world, UFO reports were scarce. Not only within the United States, but worldwide, flying saucers seemed to disappear. The few interesting sightings cannot obscure the fact that, by now, the fight to end UFO secrecy had become more engaging than the sightings themselves. Nevertheless, a few incidents are worth mentioning from this period.
