_Life_, _Time_, _Newsweek_, and many other news magazines carried
articles about the UFO's. Some were written with tongue in cheek,
others were not. All the articles mentioned the Air Force's mass-
hysterical induced hallucinations. But a Veterans' Administration
psychiatrist publicly pooh-poohed this. "Too many people are seeing
things," he said.

It was widely suggested that all the UFO's were meteors. Two Chicago
astronomers queered this. Dr. Gerard Kuiper, director of the
University of Chicago observatory, was quoted as flatly saying the
UFO's couldn't be meteors. "They are probably man-made," he told the
Associated Press. Dr. Oliver Lee, director of Northwestern
University's observatory, agreed with Dr. Kuiper and he threw in an
additional confusion factor that had been in the back of many
people's minds. Maybe they were our own aircraft.

The government had been denying that UFO's belonged to the U.S. from
the first, but Dr. Vannevar Bush, the world-famous scientist, and Dr.
Merle Tuve, inventor of the proximity fuse, added their weight.
"Impossible," they said.

All of this time unnamed Air Force officials were disclaiming
serious interest in the UFO subject. Yet every time a newspaper
reporter went out to interview a person who had seen a UFO,
intelligence agents had already been flown in, gotten the detailed
story complete with sketches of the UFO, and sped back to their base
to send the report to Project Sign. Many people had supposedly been
"warned" not to talk too much. The Air Force was mighty interested in
hallucinations.