Saucer Diehards

For two decades, the U.S. Air Force kept tab on unidentified flying objects in a project called Blue Book. Then, in 1969, the number of UFOs reported in U.S. skies sharply dwindled, and the Blue Book was closed. Why did the UFOs suddenly become scarce?

Saucer skeptics have a number of theories. For one thing, an intensive Air Force-sponsored study of UFO "sightings," conducted under the supervision of University of Colorado Physicist Edward U. Condon, was issued in 1969.

It provided plausible explanations for almost all the reports; they were apparently based on optical illusions, stars, weather inversions and even satellites. Furthermore, man's landing on the moon and his probes of nearby planets have taken much mystery out of space. As a result, former saucer enthusiasts have begun looking elsewhere for mystical experiences--in astrology, Scientology and Eastern religions.

Gods or Conquerors. Nonetheless, a formidable body of believers still exists. Among them are such uncompromising types as Gabriel Green, president of the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America, Inc. Last week he told the Wall Street Journal that inhabitants of other worlds are holding off on their visitations to the troubled earth because they feel that they would either be worshiped as gods or feared as conquerors. The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena thinks that such speculations are sheer nonsense but still refuses to reject UFOs out of hand. Says the committee's executive director, G. Stuart Nixon (no kin to the President): "Right now, our biggest problem is overcoming the negative social climate created by the Condon report. People are afraid to talk about the objects they've seen, and the press is ignoring the subject."

Dr. J. Allen Hynek, chairman of Northwestern University's astronomy department and the scientific community's most outspoken investigator of UFOs, also complains of a news blackout. To prevent the loss of what he considers "material of potential scientific value," Hynek has established an informal Blue Book project of his own at Northwestern. He is particularly anxious to get reports from trained scientific observers whose anonymity he promises to preserve (to spare them ridicule from their colleagues). Hynek insists that UFO sightings are often made by reputable observers, including scientists and technicians. Says he: "It is a gross but popular misconception that UFO reports spring from 'ding-a-lings.' " Nonetheless, he admits that there is at least one established scientist who has not yet seen--or reported--his first flying saucer: J. Allen Hynek.

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