to interview a major in the Pentagon, who was the Air Force’s Pentagon “expert” on UFO’s.  The major was asked directly about the conclusion of the Mantell Incident, and he flatly stated that it was Venus.  The writers pointed out the official Air Force analysis.  The major’s answer was, “They checked again and it was Venus.”  He didn’t know who “they” were, where they had checked, or what they had checked, but it was Venus.  The writers then asked, “If there was a later report they had made why wasn’t it used as a conclusion?” “Was it available?” The answer to the last question was “No,” and the lid snapped back down.  This interview gave the definite impression that the Air Force was unsuccessfully trying to cover up some very important information, using Venus as a front.  Nothing excites a newspaper or magazine writer more than to think he has stumbled onto a big story and that someone is trying to cover it up.  Many writers thought this after the interview with the major, and many still think it.  You can’t really blame them, either.

In early 1952 I got a telephone call on ATIC’s direct line to the Pentagon.  It was a colonel in the Director of Intelligence’s office.  The Office of Public Information had been getting a number of queries about all of the confusion over the Mantell Incident.  What was the answer?

I dug out the file.  In 1949 all of the original material on the incident had been microfilmed, but something had been spilled on the film.  Many sections were so badly faded they were illegible.  As I had to do with many of the older sightings that were now history, I collected what I could from the file, filling in the blanks by talking to people who had been at ATIC during the early UFO era.  Many of these people were still around, “Red” Honnacker, George Towles, Al Deyarmond, Nick Post, and many others.  Most of them were civilians, the military had been transferred out by this time.

Some of the press clippings in the file mentioned the Pentagon major and his concrete proof of Venus.  I couldn’t find this concrete proof in the file so I asked around about the major.  The major, I found, was an officer in the Pentagon who had at one time written a short intelligence summary about UFO’s.  He had never been stationed at ATIC, nor was he especially well versed on the UFO problem.  When the word of the press conference regarding the Mantell Incident came down, a UFO expert was needed.  The major, because of his short intelligence summary on UFO’s, became the “expert.”  He had evidently conjured up “they” and “their later report” to support his Venus answer because the writers at the press conference had him in a corner.  I looked farther.

Fortunately the man who had done the most extensive work on the incident, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, head of the Ohio State University Astronomy Department, could be contacted.  I called Dr. Hynek and arranged to meet him the next day.