Still the Air Force remained silent.

Then NICAP headquarters called in the troops and members from all corners of the nation cut loose.  The barrage of mail broke the log jam and just enough information to constitute an answer dribbled out of the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force.

But this didn’t satisfy Keyhoe or his UFO hungry NICAPions.  They wanted blood and that blood had to taste like spaceships or they wouldn’t be happy.  The cudgel they picked up next was powerful.

The Air Force had said that there was nothing classified about Project Blue Book yet NICAP hadn’t seen every blessed scrap of paper in the Air Force UFO files.  This was unwarranted censorship!

While Congress was right in the middle of such important and crucial problems as foreign policy, atomic disarmament, racketeering, integration and a dozen and one other problems, NICAP began to bedevil every senator and representative who was polite enough to listen.

It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease and in November 1957, the United States Senate Committee on Government Operations began an inquiry concerning UFO’s.

I gave my testimony and so did others who had been associated with Project Blue Book.

A few weeks later the inquiry was dropped.

But NICAP had made its name.  Of all of the thorns that have been pounded into the UFO side of the Air Force, NICAP drove theirs the deepest.

In the midst of all this mess Admiral Fahrney, General Wedemeyer and General del Valle, politely, and quietly, resigned from NICAP’s board of governors.

Neither the loss of these famous names nor the defeat at the hands of the Air Force has stopped NICAP.  They continue to forge ahead, undaunted.

In many UFO incidents they have actually uncovered additional, and sometimes interesting, information.

NICAP Director Don Keyhoe has taken a beating, being accused of profiteering, trying to make headlines, and other minor social crimes.  But personally I doubt this.  Keyhoe is simply convinced that UFO’s are from outer space and he’s a dedicated man.

While the big NICAP-Air Force battle was going on the UFO’s were not waiting to see who won.  They were still flying.

At Ellington AFB, Texas, a Ground Observer Corps team spotted a UFO and passed it on to a radar crew.  Although the radar crew couldn’t pick it up on their sets they saw it visually.  The lieutenant in charge told investigators how it crossed from horizon to horizon in 45 seconds.

On March 9, several passengers on a New York to San Juan, Porto Rico airliner were injured when the pilot pulled the big DC-6 up sharply to miss a “large, greenish white, clearly circular-shaped object” which was on a collision course with the plane.  The pilots of several other airliners in the same airway confirmed the sighting.

Two weeks later jet interceptors were scrambled over Los Angeles to look for a UFO.