Project Sign ended 1947 with a new problem. How do you collect
interplanetary intelligence? During World War II the organization
that was ATIC's forerunner, the Air Materiel Command's secret "T-2,"
had developed highly effective means of wringing out every possible
bit of information about the technical aspects of enemy aircraft.
ATIC knew these methods, but how could this be applied to spaceships?
The problem was tackled with organized confusion.

If the confusion in the minds of Air Force people was organized the
confusion in the minds of the public was not. Publicized statements
regarding the UFO were conflicting.

A widely printed newspaper release, quoting an unnamed Air Force
official in the Pentagon, said:

The "flying saucers" are one of three things:

Solar reflections on low-hanging clouds.

Small meteors that break up, their crystals catching the rays of the
sun.

Icing conditions could have formed large hailstones and they might
have flattened out and glided.

A follow-up, which quoted several scientists, said in essence that
the unnamed Air Force official was crazy. Nobody even heard of
crystallized meteors, or huge, flat hailstones, and the solar-
reflection theory was absurd.