There were a few fairly well-researched UFO sightings that year which appeared to leave physical effects. Early in the day on June 17, 1969, in the Brazilian town of Ibiuna, several people saw a “brilliantly illuminated window” hovering above the ground. It appeared to be about thirty feet in diameter, ten feet high, and illuminated a small part of the ground. The sighting lasted for forty-five minutes, the object appearing to be stationary all the time. It then vanished. Later examination of the ground underneath showed a circle of flattened grass, twenty-five feet in diameter, swirled counterclockwise, with some small “secondary” swirls. 112
On July 5, two children in the rural town of Anolaima, Colombia, saw a glowing object about three hundred yards away. It came to within sixty yards, when they ran over the hill to tell others. Thirteen people, including their father, returned to see the object. This man, Arcesio Bermudez, took a flashlight with him and returned in terror, claiming to have seen a small person and a craft that lit up and flew away. Within two days, Bermudez lost all appetite, his skin temperature dropped, blue spots appeared on his skin, and his stools became bloody. Within a week, two Bogota physicians, unaware of his UFO experience, concluded he had gastroenteritis. Within hours of his exam, Bermudez died. His doctor claimed he had previously been in good health.“113
The following week, July 12, in Van Horn, Iowa, a mysterious circular patch of shriveled soybean crop was discovered. It was 425 feet wide and slightly elongated. Intense heat or radiation was attributed as the cause. During the fall, two women near Kansas City claimed to see a craft descend close to the ground, then to hear sounds of an animal being slaughtered as the object took off.“114
On September 4, 1969, a forty-foot diameter circle was found in some scrubland in Hamilton, New Zealand. Within the circle, vegetation was dehydrated and radioactive; three deep depressions, about ten feet apart, formed a triangle in the circle’s center. Vegetation remained healthy outside the circle. A horticultural consultant said it appeared some object had landed on that spot and had taken off, emitting a short-wave, high-frequency radiation that cooked the plants from the inside out. “I know of no earthbound source of energy,” he concluded, “capable of creating a circle in this manner.” Nuclear scientists brought in by the New Zealand government, however, attributed the cause to “root rot and blight.”115
In the public realm, nothing was heard about these incidents. The UFO was a dead issue, solved by the University of Colorado. Blue Book, even before its official demise, had ceased to take reports. NICAP and APRO were both in disarray. In all likelihood, there were more sightings out there, more accounts to relate, but no one was talking, and no one listening. By the end of 1969, estimated Jacques Vallee, perhaps twenty thousand or so fairly clear and dated UFO reports existed in official and private files. There appeared little hope, however, that these scattered files would ever find their way to an organization that would seek to do anything with them.116
THE FINAL GASP
December 1969 surely was an important month in the history of UFOs. Blue Book ended, Keyhoe was fired, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, impressed by Hynek’s and McDonald’s attacks on the Condon Report, held a symposium on UFOs at its annual meeting in Boston on December 26. Two of the main forces behind this were Carl Sagan and Thornton Page, former member of the 1953 Robertson Panel, and the chairman of the astronomy section of the AAAS. While neither man was a UFO “believer,” Page at least felt more open-minded about the subject than in past years. Edward U. Condon, a former AAAS president, strenuously opposed the idea and received backing from several members. Condon went so far as to attempt to enlist the support of Vice President Spiro Agnew. The obvious likelihood was that the report would be criticized somehow. Actually, the AAAS board had approved this symposium for the previous year’s meeting in Dallas, but postponed it, partly because of the opposition, partly because the Condon Report had yet to be published.
