On May 14, 1960, a six-state area in Brazil experienced an unusual number of UFO sightings. One of these included a sighting of small, pale, human-like beings standing near two landed discs near Paracura, Ceara State (northeast Brazil). The beings beckoned to the witness, named Raimondo dos Santos, who fled. He claimed they wore blue uniforms and white helmets. Later, with others, he found marks in the sand where the crafts had rested. The previous day at 7 P.M., over one hundred people had seen a dark-gray, circular craft, sixty-five feet in diameter with a powerful light, maneuvering and hovering.124
Within a few days of July 1, 1960, according to Wilbert Smith from an interview in late 1961, the “Canadian Research Group” handling UFOs recovered “one mass of very strange metal.” There were about three thousand pounds of it, said Smith, and the Canadians did “a tremendous amount of detective work on this metal.”125
Between August 13 and 18, a miniwave of UFO sightings took place in California, mostly in the north, and included several police witnesses.126
On September 3, the London
On October 3, announced a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation news-cast, six “flying saucers” and a “mother ship” were reported from the Australian island state of Tasmania. A Church of England minister claimed to see the craft but had been reluctant to report them. He finally did report the matter when other people in the area claimed to see the objects.128
On the evening of December 9, 1960, in Carignan, France, three witnesses saw a glowing object in a park, about twelve feet in diameter, with vague shadows inside. A circle of yellowed grass was found at the site after it took off.129
The lack of current UFO reports weakened NICAP’s hand in its bid for open UFO hearings. During the first half of 1960, Keyhoe spoke at length with Congressman John McCormack, urging him to consider holding another congressional investigation. According to Keyhoe, McCormack believed that UFOs were “real” and not familiar objects or delusions. In June, NICAP sent a confidential report to members of Congress outlining its accumulated UFO evidence. In early July, members of the Senate Preparedness Committee, and the House Science and Astronautics Committee, requested an air force briefing on the UFO program. The CIA also asked to attend. The air force gave a major briefing on July 15 before a number of people: Congressmen Richard Smart (Armed Services Committee), Spencer Bereford (House Science and Astronautics Committee), Richard Hines, and Frank Hammit, and two men from the CIA (Richard Payne, technical advisor, and John Warner, assistant for legislative liaison to Allen Dulles). Air force representatives included Tacker, Friend, Hynek, and three generals. This meeting was somewhat antagonistic, especially because of Smart, who charged the air force with withholding information and said he expected to be informed of all significant sightings. Still, the air force succeeded in preventing open hearings and avoiding significant changes.130
Again, the air force knew that NICAP had provided most of the initiative behind the anti-secrecy rumblings in Congress and was none too pleased. On July 26, Tacker stated that there was “absolutely no truth in the charge that the air force or any other governmental agency [was] withholding information on the subject of UFOs from the general public.”131
But of course, such a statement could not possibly be true, no matter how one chose to interpret the meaning of UFOs. By July 1960, the United States had eleven small satellites in orbit, and the Soviet Union had sent a single large satellite. All of these objects were following predictable paths. According to Newsweek, however, tracking gear seemed to show something else in orbit. Certainly, an American satellite program would be interested in this development but would not want to publicize such a thing. Within this context, the U.S. launched its first truly successful spy satellite on August 10, 1960. This was Discoverer, which had a camera so powerful that its photos could resolve images as small as three feet. (This turned out to be an embarrassment for the air force, which had been hammering its missile gap agenda, now irrefutably proven wrong.) Days later, on August 15, the secretary of the air force wrote a memo titled “Air Force Keeping Watchful Eye on Aerospace.” It stated:
