Blue Book and the military had its explanation: meteor. Blue Book files, however, refer to a “three-man team” that had been dispatched to investigate and pick up an object that started a fire in the woods. Kevin Randle argued that this team was certainly part of Project Moon Dust. UFO skeptic James Oberg, writing in
About all we know with certainty is that within two hours of the crash, the military sealed off the site, but not before witnesses got close enough to see a crashed object in the woods. Publicly, officials were claiming that nothing at all had crashed and nothing had been found. But other witnesses claimed to see a flatbed truck with a tarp covering leave the area at high speed. A final note: John Murphy’s then-wife stated some time after that Murphy “was convinced” the object was no meteor, and in fact that he had reached the crash area with a camera. The military confiscated his film and audiotape. She also believed that the military pressured him into silence.
In 1990, a person came forward claiming to be part of the military team sent in to retrieve the object. He claimed that he received orders to “shoot anyone who got too close” and that the object was transported to Wright-Patterson AFB. Another individual who worked at Wright-Patterson claimed that a strange object was shipped there on December 16, 1965. Before being escorted away, he claimed to see it and described it nearly identically to other witness descriptions.
Both the meteorite and the Soviet satellite explanation appear to be most unlikely explanations for the Kecksburg crash, and no researchers believe it was an American satellite. Was it an alien object? The possibility is real, and the case remains open.75
1966: A YEAR OF ESCALATIONS
The United States was heading toward a boil in 1966, and the escalating war in Vietnam dominated the news. Still, the status quo held. The Freedom of Information Act passed Congress that year, but it remained toothless until 1974. The CIA and the White House, meanwhile, defeated a Senate movement for an intelligence oversight committee. In March, Lyndon Johnson requested that the FBI develop dossiers on legislators and prominent citizens opposed to the Vietnam War. From June 6 to June 10, the army conducted biological warfare tests in the New York City subway system. Trillions of
In July 1966, with Richard Helms in place as the new director of central intelligence, MK-Search went into overdrive, reactivating abandoned projects. One of these was
Despite growing civil unrest everywhere, the American media contributed its share toward maintaining a rigid status quo, almost obsequious in its compliance to the national security community. Sen. William Fulbright commented about this on August 13, 1966, during Senate hearings on government and media. It was very interesting, said Fulbright,
that so many of our prominent newspapers have become almost agents or adjuncts of the government; that they do not contest or even raise questions about government policy.78
Despite the dominance of news from Vietnam, UFO matters managed to break through for significant media coverage in 1966. The crescendo of qualified sightings was simply overwhelming. After working in practical solitude for years, Keyhoe and NICAP board members now found themselves sought for interviews and television appearances. By midyear, it was apparent that Americans were giving much more credence to the subject of flying saucers.79
