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Disillusioned by this rejection, many Project Saucer staff denounced
UFOs. Others who stood by their beliefs were quietly reassigned to other posts.
Their last fling came in February 1949 when Project Saucer assessed the 237
cases received during the past year. It claimed that 20% were unexplained and
requested an increase in funding.
However, the Pentagon had other ideas and ordered a reduction in staff.
Project Saucer was renamed Project Grudge - a deliberate expression of the US
Government's disenchantment with the whole matter.
Unbeknown to the dispirited UFO project, a new and more dramatic
research team was being funded in New Mexico under the name Project Twinkle.
Here, they studied 'green fireballs' that had plagued air space above the Los
Alamos nuclear test lab since December 1948. Dr Lincoln La Paz - a leading
astronomer on the project - was himself witness to the frequently occurring
phenomena. Famed scientists such as Dr Edward Teller, one of the men who
designed the atom bomb, worked alongside La Paz on Twinkle.
Like the ghost rockets - green fireballs have remained a part of UFO
history, creating new waves around the world, including the NATO facilities at
Suffolk, England, in October 1983. At the same time, the US government
announced that Project Grudge had failed, and was to close on 27th December.
1950: Cosmic Conspiracy
In January 1950, public discontent reached boiling point. Ex-marine
Major Donald Keyhoe was given secret help from angry staff once part of Project
Saucer. In True magazine Keyhoe published the inside story of top cases
under the title Flying Saucers are Real. Needless to say, the article
was very widely read.
By March, a book of the same title had appeared from Keyhoe, charging
the US Government with a cover-up. This theme of a cosmic conspiracy became a
crusade for Keyhoe and led to him becoming a pioneer of the private UFO
investigation community.
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