Ancillary Mercy полностью

In 1952, officers at Wright-Patterson AFB asked Mariana if they could review his film again, and he sent it to them. The navy also appears to have reviewed it. Once again, air force records showed that two F-94 fighters had landed at the local air force base at the time of the alleged UFO sighting. Several problems emerged, however. First, analysis showed that Mariana had been mistaken in his claimed time of observation, judging by the particular reflections given off by the objects. Second, Mariana still claimed to have seen the air force jets in another part of the sky. Third, a photogrammetric analysis by Dr. Robert Baker of Douglas Aircraft concluded that the air force explanation—that the images were reflections off jet aircraft—was “quite strained.”

Identifying the sighting as “possible aircraft,” the air force once again returned the film to Mariana. This time, Mariana claimed that the film was missing the thirty-five best frames, which had shown the objects more clearly as disc-shaped. The air force responded that it had removed a single, damaged, frame and had said so in a letter to Mariana. Mariana claimed that the air force had sent him a letter that would prove his accusation, but he never produced it.

One final problem associated with the date of the film. The air force considered both August 5 and 15 as the two possibilities. Later examination showed that the Great Falls baseball team had no home games between August 9 and 18, which would appear to eliminate August 15 as a candidate. If this is so, then the air force’s “possible aircraft” explanation is no longer tenable, as records did not show any aircraft on the fifth in the correct location at the time of the filming. (Of course, Mariana claimed to see those jets.) Seemingly supporting Mariana’s claim is the statement of Edward Ruppelt, who also reinvestigated this case. Ruppelt determined to his satisfaction that the two jets were nowhere near where the UFOs had been.

All studies of the Montana film agree that it was not faked, that the objects appeared to be disc-shaped. The Condon committee analysis of the film in the 1960s said that the evidence eliminated the possibility of the objects being birds, balloons, mirages, or meteors, and considered it unlikely, although not impossible, that the objects were jets.⁶³

SCULLY, SARBACHER, SMITH, AND KEYHOE

In early September, the first book on UFOs was published, Frank Scully’s Behind the Flying Saucers. It is best known for its tale of dead humanoid aliens and captured flying saucers in the American Southwest, beginning in 1948. Almost universally, the book was panned. His main source for this information was an oil prospector named Silas Newton and a mysterious “Dr. Gee,” later identified as Leo GeBauer, a con man with a long arrest record. In 1952, True commissioned J. P. Cahn to check Scully’s story, which Cahn exposed as a hoax in his article “The Flying Saucers and the Mysterious Little Men.” The story, wrote Cahn, was a ploy to gain the attention of potential investors in a bogus oil detection scheme allegedly linked to ET technology. UFO researcher Jerome Clark called Scully “naive” and wrote that “there seems no doubt that Scully was a victim, not a perpetrator, of the hoax.” Most UFO researchers agree with this assessment.⁶⁴

Not all, however. Jim and Coral Lorenzen analyzed claims of occupant sightings more thoroughly than any other researchers during the early years. In 1975, they wrote that Scully was either telling the truth or was “a prophet.” Small humanoids generally answering his description had been seen a number of times, they said. But the approval of the Lorenzens never overcame the effect of Cahn’s article.⁶⁵

Scully may have been duped. Nevertheless, his book received serious attention from some people in the Pentagon. This should not be surprising, as secret UFO-related conversations had been taking place all summer long among government, military, and intelligence people. On September 15, Canadian government official and engineer Wilbert Smith came to the U.S. with several colleagues and met in the office of Robert Sarbacher, a physicist with the U.S. Defense Department Research and Development Board. During this meeting, Smith and Sarbacher discussed Scully’s book and UFO secrecy in general. Sarbacher told Smith that “the facts reported in [Scully’s] book are substantially correct.” To Smith’s question as to whether saucers exist, Sarbacher replied, “Yes, they exist,” and “we have not been able to duplicate their performance.” He also told Smith that the UFO subject was “classified two points higher even than the H-bomb. In fact, it is the most highly classified subject in the U.S. government at the present time.” As for the reason for the classification, Sarbacher replied, “You may ask, but I can’t tell you.”