Gulf and disappearing inland over Mississippi or Alabama.
Tompkins, the co-pilot, never saw it because Mueller was too
astounded to even utter a sound.

But Mueller had a good look. The body of the object was shaped like
a bullet and gave off a "pale, luminescent blue glow." The stubby
tail, or exhaust, was marked by "spurts of yellow flame or light."

The size? Mueller, like any experienced observer, had no idea since
he didn't know how far away it was. But, it was big!

One sentence, dangling at the bottom of the report was one I'd seen
many, many times before: "Mr. Mueller _was_ a complete skeptic
regarding UFO reports."

During 1956 there was a rumor--I heard it many times--that the Air
Force had entered into a grand conspiracy with the U.S. news media to
"stamp out the UFO." The common people of the world, the rumor had
it, were not yet psychologically conditioned to learn that we had
been visited by superior beings. By not ever mentioning the words
"unidentified flying object" the public would forget and go on their
merry, stupid way. I heard this rumor so often, in fact, that I began
to wonder myself. But a few dollars invested in Martinis for old
buddies in the Kittyhawk Room of the Biltmore Hotel in Dayton, or the
Men's bar in the Statler Hotel in Washington, produces a lot of
straight and reliable information--much better than you get through
official channels. There was no "silence" order I learned, only the
same old routine. If the files at ATIC were opened to the public it
would take a staff of a dozen people to handle all the inquiries.

Secondly, many of the inquiries come from saucer screwballs and
these people are like a hypochondriac at the doctor's; nothing will
make them believe the diagnosis unless it is what they came in to
hear. And there are plenty of saucer screwballs.

One officer summed it up neatly when he told me, "It isn't the UFO's
that give us the trouble, it's the people."

As a double check I called several newspaper editors the other day
and asked, "Why don't you print more UFO stories?" The answers were
simple, it's the old "dog bites man" bit--ninety-nine per cent have
no news value any more.

On May 10, 1956, the man bit the dog.

A string of UFO sightings in Pueblo, Colorado, hit the front pages
of newspapers across the United States. Starting on the night of May
5th, for six nights, the citizens of Pueblo, including the Ground
Observer Corps, saw UFO's zip over their