Unidentified flying objects: hearing before the Committee on Armed Forces of the House of Representatives, Eighty-ninth Congress, second session, April 5, 1966 ...

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[From the Saturday Review, Oct. 2, 1965]
ADDENDUM IIA (UFO RPT, SEPTEMBER 3, 1965, KENSINGTON, N.H. (BERTRAND-
HUNT-MUSCARELLO))
TRADE WINDS
(By John G. Fuller)
When the tidal wave of reports about unidentified flying objects hit even the
august pages of the New York Times last summer, we made a mental note to
follow the story through to see just what conclusions might eventually be drawn.
State police in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and New Mexico had risked their jobs
and reputations for sanity in reporting a wide number of observations, corrobo-
rated by radar trackings from the Tinker and Carswell Air Force Bases. Later,
however, the Air Force made it a point to release a statement that the radar
trackings did not correspond to the visual findings of the Oklahoma Department
of Public Safety, and the story disappeared from the pages of the press.
Skepticism is a healthy thing, especially when you get involved with whirling
saucers that defy the laws of aerodynamics. But curiosity is also a powerful
force, and it was for this reason that we decided to track down at least one
specific case of UFO chasing.
A phone call to the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon
in Washington, D.C., put us in touch with Richard H. Hall, its acting director.
We learned from Mr. Hall that the Oklahoma State Police had released a nine-
page report through its department of public safety, contradicting the Air Force
statement and indicating that without question the Carswell Air Force Base
radar trackings and the State police visual reports were identical. What's more,
a steady stream of new findings had been received by NICAP. Most interesting
was a report that the NICAP representative in New England, Mr. Raymond
Fowler, was just completing a survey on an alleged landing of a UFO in Exeter,
N.H., witnessed by not just one but two police officers.
We talked successively and at length to Mr. Fowler; Lieutenant Cottrell of
the Exeter police; the Hampton, N.H., police desk; James R. Bucknam, managing
editor of the Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader; Officer Bertrand, of the Exeter
police force; and the Pease Air Force Base in nearby Portsmouth, N.H.
Understandably, the Air Force is extremely wary about the matter of UFO's,
and the Pease base could only confirm that a large number of sightings had been
reported locally.
Beyond that, however, we were able to piece together the following story:
Shortly after midnight, on September 3, Officer Eugene Bertrand of the Exeter
police force was on routine duty. cruising along an overpass on Route 101 near
the town. He pulled up besides a parked car and found in it two women who
were visibly disturbed. They reported to him that an airborne object, bright
red and flashing, had been trailing then) for nearly 12 miles, all the way from
the town of Epping. Bertrand, an Air Force veteran of the Korean war, was
skeptical, made a routine radio report, and went on with his cruising.
Within that same hour, Norman Muscarello, an 18-year-old resident of Exeter,
was hitchhiking home from Amesbury, Mass., and had reached a point 2 miles
out of town along Route 150, near Kensington. According to his statement to
the police, he looked up into the sky and saw a similar object approaching him
with a yawing, kitelike motion. He threw himself against a stone wall while
the object hovered over a nearby farmhouse, lighting up the entire area. He
finally made a run for the farmhouse as the object sailed out of sight. Unable
to make sense of his hysterical story, the farmer took no further action and the
boy hitchhiked into town. Here he reported the story to the police, even though
he was in a state bordering on shock.
It was now about 2 a.m., Officer Bertrand was called on his car radio and
instructed to take the boy back to the farm area to investigate.
"I was sure that these women and this kid had seen a helicopter, or something
like that," Officer Bertrand told us. "But we went out to the spat, and I parked
the cruiser. It was a clear night. No wind. No fog. We walked about a hundred
yards out on the field, near a barn where a lot of horses were kept. Then, the
kid yelled,'There it is!'
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