But Mueller had a good look.  The body of the object was shaped like a bullet and gave off a “pale, luminescent blue glow.”  The stubby tail, or exhaust, was marked by “spurts of yellow flame or light.”

The size?  Mueller, like any experienced observer, had no idea since he didn’t know how far away it was.  But, it was big!

One sentence, dangling at the bottom of the report was one I’d seen many, many times before:  “Mr. Mueller was a complete skeptic regarding UFO reports.”

During 1956 there was a rumor—­I heard it many times—­that the Air Force had entered into a grand conspiracy with the U.S. news media to “stamp out the UFO.”  The common people of the world, the rumor had it, were not yet psychologically conditioned to learn that we had been visited by superior beings.  By not ever mentioning the words “unidentified flying object” the public would forget and go on their merry, stupid way.  I heard this rumor so often, in fact, that I began to wonder myself.  But a few dollars invested in Martinis for old buddies in the Kittyhawk Room of the Biltmore Hotel in Dayton, or the Men’s bar in the Statler Hotel in Washington, produces a lot of straight and reliable information—­much better than you get through official channels.  There was no “silence” order I learned, only the same old routine.  If the files at ATIC were opened to the public it would take a staff of a dozen people to handle all the inquiries.

Secondly, many of the inquiries come from saucer screwballs and these people are like a hypochondriac at the doctor’s; nothing will make them believe the diagnosis unless it is what they came in to hear.  And there are plenty of saucer screwballs.

One officer summed it up neatly when he told me, “It isn’t the UFO’s that give us the trouble, it’s the people.”

As a double check I called several newspaper editors the other day and asked, “Why don’t you print more UFO stories?” The answers were simple, it’s the old “dog bites man” bit—­ninety-nine per cent have no news value any more.

On May 10, 1956, the man bit the dog.

A string of UFO sightings in Pueblo, Colorado, hit the front pages of newspapers across the United States.  Starting on the night of May 5th, for six nights, the citizens of Pueblo, including the Ground Observer Corps, saw UFO’s zip over their community.  As usual there were various descriptions but everyone agreed “they’d never seen anything like it before.”

On the sixth night, the Air Force sent in an investigator and he saw them.  Between the hours of 9:00P.M. and midnight he saw six groups of triangular shaped objects that glowed “with a dull fluorescence, faint but bright enough to see.”  They passed from horizon to horizon in six seconds.

The next day this investigator was called back to Colorado Springs, his base, and a fresh team was sent to Pueblo.

The man really chomped down on the dog in July and the UFO really made headlines.