Congressman Stanton continued to apply pressure on the case and complained to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara about Blue Book’s treatment of his constituents. Weitzel wrote to Quintanilla on May 17 with another critique of the Blue Book explanation. Even Hynek urged Blue Book to change the case to unknown. Still, in the words of Jerome Clark, Blue Book “withstood the onslaught.” The official explanation remained
The incident ruined the career and marriage of Dale Spaur, who was apparently traumatized by the incident itself and then the subject of relentless ridicule. Immediately after the event, he seemed to change. His wife “never saw him more frightened before.” He inexplicably became violent with her, and she filed assault-and-battery charges, then for divorce. Six months later, he had lost forty pounds, turned in his badge, and was working as a painter while living in a small motel room.
Huston also resigned from the force within a few months and became a bus driver in Seattle. He had been a seven-year veteran. “Sure, I quit because of that thing,” he said. “People laughed at me. And there was pressure. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but the pressure was there. The city officials didn’t like police officers chasing flying saucers.” Wilbur Neff wasn’t a full-time police officer, but he, too, was affected. His wife said, “I hope I never see him like he was after the chase. He was real white, almost in a state of shock.”94
The Portage County UFO sightings were among the most compelling of 1966, but there were other UFO sightings in the area at the time. On the night of April 18 in Battle Creek, Michigan, a gray, oval object, about eighty feet in diameter and fifteen feet high, was seen from a distance of about eighty feet by a forty-two-year-old witness driving a car. The driver claimed to see windows and three rows of lights. The next night, in Peabody, Massachusetts, a man saw what he thought was a crashing plane, then realized the object was oval, with multicolored lights. The object flew low over him, circled, came down with pendulum motion, and appeared to land on Route 114. Shortly afterwards, two men driving along that route saw a beam sweep the road. They stopped and saw a disc-like object with multicolored lights matching the description of the first report. On April 25, Florida Governor Haydon Burns and a group of newsmen had a close sighting of a UFO while on the governor’s Convair during a campaign tour. The craft paced the plane, then climbed away. Several journalists aboard the plane also saw the object and gave the story wide publicity.95
JAMES MCDONALD, AN OUTSTANDING NUISANCE
During the spring of 1966, James McDonald, atmospheric physicist from the University of Arizona, entered the UFO picture. In March, he had written to Tom Malone, chairman of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Atmospheric Sciences, urging that a small panel be set up by some scientific body, which would avoid publicity but gain access to Blue Book and related files. McDonald also wrote to Congressman Morris Udall about the idea and urged Udall to pass the letter on in confidence to Gerald Ford, who was then making waves over the Michigan sightings. Naturally, McDonald hoped to participate on such a panel. The idea never materialized, but McDonald soon received a small stipend from the Office of Naval Research to examine Blue Book material at Wright-Patterson AFB. The reason given: perhaps certain kinds of clouds could account for some of the radar trackings of UFOs.
On June 6, 1966, McDonald, at Wright-Patterson AFB, discovered an unedited copy of the Robertson Panel report. Seeing what surely appeared to be hard evidence that the CIA was directing a cover-up, McDonald was extremely disturbed. Two days later, he was at the office of J. Allen Hynek. Pounding his fist on Hynek’s desk at one point, McDonald said Hynek should have spoken out about the cover-up of UFO information. Vallee was present and described McDonald as a man “afraid of nothing.” This was true, a quality that eventually led to McDonald’s downfall. But for now, the air force saw McDonald as a man they needed to fireproof. Hynek wrote that the Blue Book staff considered McDonald as an “outstanding nuisance.” Certainly they gave him no assistance in his research: on June 30, he requested that Wright-Patterson photocopy the Robertson Panel report for him. This was denied. On July 20, McDonald learned that the report was “reclassified” by the CIA.96
