anonymous tipster telling exactly what was going on in Simpson's
hotel room. This was a very curious situation because no one except
Simpson, the airline pilot, and the two harbor patrolmen knew what
was taking place. The room had even been thoroughly searched for
hidden microphones.

That is the way the story stood a few hours after Lieutenant Brown
and Captain Davidson arrived in Tacoma.

After asking Jackson and Richards a few questions, the two
intelligence agents left, reluctant even to take any of the
fragments. As some writers who have since written about this incident
have said, Brown and Davidson seemed to be anxious to leave and
afraid to touch the fragments of the UFO, as if they knew something
more about them. The two officers went to McChord AFB, near Tacoma,
where their B-25 was parked, held a conference with the intelligence
officer at McChord, and took off for their home base, Hamilton. When
they left McChord they had a good idea as to the identity of the
UFO's. Fortunately they told the McChord intelligence officer what
they had determined from their interview.

In a few hours the two officers were dead. The B-25 crashed near
Kelso, Washington. The crew chief and a passenger had parachuted to
safety. The newspapers hinted that the airplane was sabotaged and
that it was carrying highly classified material. Authorities at
McChord AFB confirmed this latter point, the airplane was carrying
classified material.

In a few days the newspaper publicity on the crash died down, and
the Maury Island Mystery was never publicly solved.