. He even vetoed the idea of putting it into a secret wire. Such
extreme caution really stopped me, because anything can be coded and
put in a wire.
When I left Dayton about a week later I decided to go straight to
the fighter base, planning to arrive there in midmorning. But while I
was changing airlines my reservations got fouled up, and I was faced
with waiting until evening to get to the base. I called the
intelligence officer and told him about the mix-up. He told me to
hang on right there and he would fly over and pick me up in a T-33 jet.
As soon as we were in the air, on the return trip, I called the
intelligence officer on the interphone and asked him what was going
on. What did he have? Why all the mystery? He tried to tell me, but
the interphone wasn't working too well and I couldn't understand what
he was saying. Finally he told me to wait until we returned to his
office and I could read the report myself.
Report! If he had a UFO report why hadn't he sent it in to Project
Blue Book as he usually did?
We landed at the fighter base, checked in our parachutes, Mae Wests,
and helmets, and drove over to his office. There were several other
people in the office, and they greeted me with the usual question,
"What's new on the flying saucer front?" I talked with them for a
while, but was getting impatient to find out what was on the
intelligence officer's mind. I was just about to ask him about the
mysterious report when he took me to one side and quietly asked me
not to mention it until everybody had gone.
Once we were alone, the intelligence officer shut the door, went
over to his safe, and dug out a big, thick report. It was the
standard Air Force reporting form that is used for all intelligence
reports, including UFO reports. The intelligence officer told me that
this was the only existing copy. He said that he had been told to
destroy all copies, but had saved one for me to read.
With great curiosity, I took the report and started to read. What
_had_ happened at this fighter base?
About ten o'clock in the morning, one day a few weeks before, a
radar near the base had picked up an unidentified target. It was an
odd target in that it came in very fast--about 700 miles per hour--
and then slowed down to about 100 miles per hour. The radar showed
that it was located northeast of the airfield, over a sparsely
settled area.
Unfortunately the radar station didn't have any height-finding
equipment. T
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