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Frank Edwards published his own successful UFO book during the year, Flying Saucers: Serious Business. The book beat the Keyhoe drum of cover-up and relayed many interesting UFO reports. Others criticized it, with some justice, for careless reporting and factual errors. Coral Lorenzen went so far as to consider it “catastrophic to researchers who deal with facts.” This was going a little bit too far. It is true that Edwards graduated from the Donald E. Keyhoe School of Purple Prose and, more seriously, reported many stories without bothering to check them. Yet, Lorenzen’s motivations derived at least in part from her feud with NICAP, of which Edwards was a longtime, high-profile member. In the 1960s as in later decades, UFO research was ridden with infighting and rivalries. Edwards’s book, flawed though it was, remained undeniably valuable in many respects and contained much that was useful to contemporary and later researchers. His errors of fact certainly did not distinguish him from most other UFO writers of the period. Only a year before, Jacques Vallee’s study of UFOs, Anatomy of a Phenomenon, had appeared in print and received widespread acclaim, and yet it, too, contained various mistakes. Even Coral Lorenzen, admittedly more scrupulous in such matters than most, was not immune to errors.⁸⁰

On February, 3, 1966, the air force convened an ad hoc committee to review Project Blue Book. Chaired by Dr. Brian O’Brien, it included Carl Sagan, Jesse Orlansky, Launor Carter, Willis A. Ware, and Richard Porter. Also attending was Lt. Col. Harold A. Steiner, assistant secretary to the United States Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. The group, which met for one day, received a briefing from Quintanilla, reviewed the Robertson Panel report of 1953, and studied a few UFO reports.

At the end of this one-day analysis, the committee endorsed Blue Book, despite its knowledge that most of the ten-thousand-plus sightings had been investigated by a ghost of a staff. The committee concluded that UFOs did not represent extraterrestrial technology and that they did not pose a threat to U.S. security. Still, it recommended that Blue Book be strengthened to provide a better scientific investigation for a certain number of cases that appeared to be worthy of study. Its primary conclusion—actually a bit of a jolt to the air force—was that

perhaps one hundred sightings a year might be subjected to this close study, and that possibly an average of ten man-days be required per sighting so studied. The information provided by such a program might bring to light new facts of scientific value.

The committee also recommended that the UFO problem be handed over to a few selected universities and the full reports of such work be “printed in full and be available on request.” Moreover, Blue Book’s data, which was then classified, should be widely circulated among members of Congress and other public officials. There can be no question that the O’Brien Committee’s recommendations sat poorly with those seeking to keep the UFO problem buried. Ask Blue Book to subject one hundred sightings per year to ten man-days of study each? One can imagine the reaction at ATIC. All of the committee’s proposals were disregarded.⁸¹

During the same month, a UFO panel discussion called Open Mind took place, which included John Fuller, Donald Menzel, Allen Hynek, Leo Sprinkle, and Frank Salisbury. Its moderator was Dr. Eric Goldman, on leave from Princeton to act as academic advisor to LBJ. Included in the discussion was the Exeter incident. Menzel called the police officers “hysterical subjects,” although he could not even recall their names, and clearly knew nothing about the case. Fuller, who investigated the case thoroughly, was amazed at such a display.⁸²

MICHIGAN SWAMP GAS