not easily fooled."

The day after this story appeared, I was discussing it with an airline
official in Washington.

"That's an odd thing," he said. "The Air Force could have persuaded
those pilots--or the line president--to hush the thing up. It looks as
if they wanted that story broadcast."

"You mean the whole thing was planted?"

"I won't say that, though it could have been. Probably they did see
something. But they might have been told what to say about it."

"Any idea why?"

He looked at me sharply. "You and Purdy probably know the answer. At a
guess, I'd say it might have been planned to offset that Navy
commander's report--the one on the White Sands sightings."

{p. 14}

The White Sands case had puzzled many skeptics, because the Pentagon
had cleared the published report. The author, Commander R. B.
McLaughlin, was a regular Navy officer. As a Navy rocket expert, he
had been stationed at the White Sands Rocket Proving Ground in New
Mexico. In his published article he described three disk sightings at
White Sands.

One of the disks, a huge elliptical craft, was tracked by scientists