After staying in the area about twenty minutes, the jets began to run low on fuel and returned to their base.  Minutes later it began to get light, and when the sun came up all the targets were gone.

Early Sunday morning, in an interview with the press, the Korean veteran who piloted the F-94, Lieutenant William Patterson, said: 

I tried to make contact with the bogies below 1,000 feet, but they [the radar controllers] vectored us around.  I saw several bright lights.  I was at my maximum speed, but even then I had no closing speed.  I ceased chasing them because I saw no chance of overtaking them.  I was vectored into new objects.  Later I chased a single bright light which I estimated about 10 miles away.  I lost visual contact with it about 2 miles.

When Major Fournet finished telling me about the night’s activity, my first question was, “How about the radar targets—­could they have been caused by weather?”

I knew that Lieutenant Holcomb was a sharp electronics man and that Major Fournet, although no electronics specialist, was a crackerjack engineer, so their opinion meant a lot.

Dewey said that everybody in the radar room was convinced that the targets were very probably caused by solid metallic objects.  There had been weather targets on the scope too, he said, but these were common to the Washington area and the controllers were paying no attention to them.

And this something solid could poke along at 100 miles an hour or outdistance a jet, I thought to myself.

I didn’t ask Dewey any more because he’d been up all night and wanted to get to bed.

Monday morning Major Ed Gregory, another intelligence officer at ATIC, and I left for Washington, but our flight was delayed in Dayton so we didn’t arrive until late afternoon.  On the way through the terminal building to get a cab downtown, I picked up the evening papers.  Every headline was about the UFO’s: 

FIERY OBJECTS OUTRUN JETS OVER CAPITAL—­INVESTIGATION VEILED IN SECRECY FOLLOWING VAIN CHASE

JETS ALERTED FOR SAUCERS—­INTERCEPTORS CHASE LIGHTS IN D.C.  SKIES

EXPERT HERE TO PUSH STUDY AS OBJECTS IN SKIES REPORTED AGAIN

I jokingly commented about wondering who the expert was.  In a half hour I found out—­I was.  When Major Gregory and I walked into the lobby of the Roger Smith Hotel to check in, reporters and photographers rose from the easy chairs and divans like a covey of quail.  They wanted my secrets, but I wasn’t going to tell nor would I pose for pictures while I wasn’t telling anything.  Newspaper reporters are a determined lot, but Greg ran interference and we reached the elevator without even a “no comment.”

The next day was one of confusion.  After the first Washington sighting the prevailing air in the section of the Pentagon’s fourth floor, which is occupied by Air Force Intelligence, could be described as excitement, but this day it was confusion.  There was a maximum of talk and a minimum of action.  Everyone agreed that both sightings should be thoroughly investigated, but nobody did anything.  Major Fournet and I spent the entire morning “just leaving” for somewhere to investigate “something.”  Every time we would start to leave, something more pressing would come up.