eers all have seen UFO's
and they aren't their own balloons. I was almost tossed out of the
General Mills offices into a cold January Minneapolis snowstorm for
suggesting such a thing--but that comes later in our history of the
UFO.

I don't know what these people saw. There has been a lot of interest
generated by these sightings because of the extremely high
qualifications and caliber of the observers. There is some legitimate
doubt as to the accuracy of the speed and altitude figures that
McLaughlin's crew arrived at from the data they measured with their
theodolite. This doesn't mean much, however. Even if they were off by
a factor of 100 per cent, the speeds and altitudes would be
fantastic, and besides they looked at the UFO through a 25-power
telescope and swore that it was a flat, oval-shaped object. Balloons,
birds, and airplanes aren't flat and oval-shaped.

Astrophysicist Dr. Donald Menzel, in a book entitled _Flying_
_Saucers_, says they saw a refracted image of their own balloon
caused by an atmospheric phenomenon. Maybe he is right, but the
General Mills people don't believe it. And their disagreement is
backed up by years of practical experience with the atmosphere, its
tricks and its illusions.

When the March issue of _True_ magazine carrying Commander
McLaughlin's story about how the White Sands Scientists had tracked
UFO's reached the public, it stirred up a hornets' nest. Donald
Keyhoe's article in the January _True_ had converted many people but
there were still a few heathens. The fact that government scientists
had seen UFO's, and were admitting it, took care of a large
percentage of these heathens. More and more people were believing in
flying saucers.

The Navy had no comment to make about the sightings, but they did
comment on McLaughlin. It seems that several months before, at the
suggestion of a group of scientists at White Sands, McLaughlin had
carefully written up the details of the sightings and forwarded them
to Washington. The report contained no personal opinions, just facts.
The comments on McLaughlin's report had been wired back to White
Sands from Washington and they were, "What are you drinking out
there?" A very intelligent answer--and it came from an admiral in the
Navy's guided missile program.

By the time his story was published, McLaughlin was no longer at
White Sands; he was at sea on the destroyer _Bristol_. Maybe he
answered the admiral's wire.

The Air Force had n