CHAPTER FIVE

The Dark Ages

The order of February 11, 1949, that changed the name of Project Sign to Project Grudge had not directed any change in the operating policy of the project.  It had, in fact, pointed out that the project was to continue to investigate and evaluate reports of sightings of unidentified flying objects.  In doing this, standard intelligence procedures would be used.  This normally means the unbiased evaluation of intelligence data.  But it doesn’t take a great deal of study of the old UFO files to see that standard intelligence procedures were no longer being used by Project Grudge.  Everything was being evaluated on the premise that UFO’s couldn’t exist.  No matter what you see or hear, don’t believe it.

New people took over Project Grudge.  ATIC’s top intelligence specialists who had been so eager to work on Project Sign were no longer working on Project Grudge.  Some of them had drastically and hurriedly changed their minds about UFO’s when they thought that the Pentagon was no longer sympathetic to the UFO cause.  They were now directing their talents toward more socially acceptable projects.  Other charter members of Project Sign had been “purged.”  These were the people who had refused to change their original opinions about UFO’s.

With the new name and the new personnel came the new objective, get rid of the UFO’s.  It was never specified this way in writing but it didn’t take much effort to see that this was the goal of Project Grudge.  This unwritten objective was reflected in every memo, report, and directive.

To reach their objective Project Grudge launched into a campaign that opened a new age in the history of the UFO.  If a comparative age in world history can be chosen, the Dark Ages would be most appropriate.  Webster’s Dictionary defines the Dark Ages as a period of “intellectual stagnation.”

To one who is intimately familiar with UFO history it is clear that Project Grudge had a two-phase program of UFO annihilation.  The first phase consisted of explaining every UFO report.  The second phase was to tell the public how the Air Force had solved all the sightings.  This, Project Grudge reasoned, would put an end to UFO reports.

Phase one had been started by the people of Project Sign.  They realized that a great many reports were caused by people seeing balloons or such astronomical bodies as planets, meteors, or stars.  They also realized that before they could get to the heart of the UFO problems they had to sift out this type of report.  To do this they had called on outside help.  Air Weather Service had been asked to screen the reports and check those that sounded like balloons against their records of balloon flights.  Dr. J. Allen Hynek, distinguished astrophysicist and head of Ohio State University’s Astronomy Department, had been given a contract to sort out those reports