ere was a "huge fiery-orange sphere" hovering in the sky
directly over their range station.

Not too long after this excitement had started, in fact just after
the technician had checked the radar and found that the targets
weren't caused by a radar malfunction, ARTC had called for Air Force
interceptors to come in and look around. But they didn't show, and
finally ARTC called again--then again. Finally, just about daylight,
an F-94 arrived, but by that time the targets were gone. The F-94
crew searched the area for a few minutes but they couldn't find
anything unusual so they returned to their base.

So ended phase one of the Washington National Sightings.

The Bolling AFB intelligence officer said he would write up the
complete report and forward it to ATIC.

That afternoon things bustled in the Pentagon. Down on the first
floor Al Chop was doing his best to stave off the press while up on
the fourth floor intelligence officers were holding some serious
conferences. There was talk of temperature inversions and the false
targets they could cause; but the consensus was that a good radar
operator could spot inversion-caused targets, and the traffic
controllers who operated the radar at Washington National Airport
weren't just out of radar school. Every day the lives of thousands of
people depended upon their interpretation of the radar targets they
saw on their scopes. And you don't get a job like this unless you've
spent a good many years watching a luminous line paint targets on a
good many radarscopes. Targets caused by inversions aren't rare--in
the years that these men had been working with radar they had
undoubtedly seen every kind of target, real or false, that radar can
detect. They had told the Bolling AFB intelligence officer that the
targets they saw were caused by the radar waves' bouncing off a hard,
solid object. The Air Force radar operator at Andrews backed them up;
so did two veteran airline pilots who saw lights right where the
radar showed a UFO to be.

Then on top of all this there were the reports from the Washington
area during the previous two weeks--all good--all from airline pilots
or equally reliable people.

To say the least, the sighting at Washington National was a jolt.

Besides trying to figure out what the Washington National UFO's
were, we had the problem of what to tell the press. They were now
beginning to put on a squeeze by threatening to call a congressman--
and nothing chil