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Hot on the heels of his presentation of the Exeter case, John Fuller
discovered the gem in ufology's files - the Betty and Barney Hill case. The
couple even lived right on his doorstep, so he quickly signed up to produce a
book about their extraordinary claims. Over the next twelve months this work, The
interrupted Journey, became a huge global hit, alerting everyone to the
concept of alien abductions. It even mode a pretty good TV film as The UFO
Incident.
On March 20th a series of sightings in Michigan received wide attention.
Allen Hynek proposed that some were "swamp gas" - glowing methane pockets
floating through the air. He was probably right, but such was the public alarm
that an uproar resulted. Congressman Gerald Ford (later to become US President)
wrote to the Armed Services committee on March 28th denouncing Air Force
investigations and demanding a full enquiry into UFOs.
In fact, a commission headed by optical physicist Dr Brian O'Brien with
cosmologist Dr Carl Sagan had just met and secretly advised that "contracts
should be negotiated with a few selected universities to provide scientific
teams" to follow up top cases. The commission further proposed that the Blue
Book data be declassified and made available to interested researchers. On
April 21st, Gerald Ford delightedly announced the plan but, as it turned out,
it was only implemented in a limited fashion.
No Blue Book files were declassified, but half a million dollars was
allocated to allow just one university to operate a two year research
contract. All files were supposedly released to the university. However, they
only discovered the vital Bentwaters/Lakenheath radar story by accident. The
USAF witnesses involved naturally assumed that the UFO study must have received
this file and spoken to investigators. It was, after all, such a major case.
But its release had, somehow, been "forgotten".
Prestigious universities such as MIT turned down the UFO project - even
with such a large government grant. When it was offered to the University of
Colorado they had no idea they were more or less a last resort. Even so, staff
member Robert Low (who became project administrator) had a hard task persuading
his bosses to take on the job. On August 9th he convinced them with
a memo that said, "the trick would be, I think, to describe the project so
that to the public, it would appear a totally objective study..." when in
truth, he added it would be anything but. This "trick memo" was filed away and
not shown to the scientists employed when the University accepted the contract.
On October 7th, quantum physicist Dr Edward Condon was named head of the
new UFO project, and was congratulated by an extensive media fanfare.
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