The UFO Gap

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

# Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100010006-5

down (Note: I was not using the brakes) and the whole car came under control of the UFO. The car came to a complete stop. Lights, radio, heater, wipers, all electrically operated, instantly stopped.

Other than being frightened, we had no other sensation than that we were being observed. I rolled down my window and, putting my head out of the window, I looked up and approximately 200 feet directly overhead was a saucer-shaped space vehicle. By this time, my eyes had become adjusted to the light that was emitted from the space vehicle. I could observe the size and shape as well as see the observation windows around the upper deck. The UFO was at least 50 feet in diameter. At the same time, a high-pitched whine could be heard and a very light warm wind was being emitted from the bottom of the vehicle.

The vehicle had in the center a large extended dome. The time factor was not of long duration, no more than two or three minutes. There was no other visible traffic on the highway at this time. After this short period of time, the vehicle, with an increase in intensity of the whine, lifted straight up from its hovering position and, as this occurred, the car began to function and make normal movement on the highway. The lights, radio, wipers, heater and motor functioned as if they had never stopped.

I wish to state that this was not a type of any known earthcraft. I have worked in and around aircraft since 1940, when I graduated from the Spartan School of Aeronautics, and I am also a discharged veteran from the U.S. Air Force.

Here is one from an air base in Alaska:

At the time of the sighting I was at work (in the base control tower) and I had an air carrier shortly beginning an approach. As is my custom, I had the lights in the cab turned down low. I got up from the console and looked out the window to make a visual check of the runway. As I looked to the north end of the runway, I saw a light coming down center of the runway. My first thought was, I had an aircraft on approach that I didn't know anything about. The light was moving at about the speed of a large aircraft making a low pass. The light continued down the center line of the runway at about a height of 50 feet. The airport is equipped with high-intensity runway lighting. The lights were on step 3; the lighting

control panel is located to the right and just behind me. As the light reached a spot just a little north of my position, I reached around and flicked the light to step 4, hoping to cause a reflection off the body of the object, as I was still unable to see anything other than a light, even though visibility was excellent. When the lights went brighter, the object made a right turn and started to climb, increasing speed extremely fast, clearing the nearby mountain in a second or two. At this time, I lost sight of the object as it seemed to level off and became lost behind the mountains. One other thing that I forgot to point out above. When the light turned and started to climb, it did so sharply, whereas when an airplane turns or climbs, it makes an arc.

And let's take just a short excerpt from another.

As I approached a bedroom window . . . the whole yard was bathed in a brilliant orange. Everything looked as something does when it is reflecting fire. I looked up at the sky and there was a big orange light. I woke my husband and told him to come look at the thing in the sky. He got up, came to the window, and as I kept saying, "What can it be?" he just kept repeating, "Oh, my God." It seems like we watched it for about a minute. It was stationary in the sky all that time and seemed to be quite near. The light was more powerful than anything we had ever seen, but still we could look right at it. As we watched, the light finally went out, not slowly, but still not as fast as you would turn off an electric bulb. All that was left was what looked exactly like a star and it began to move. We watched as it moved toward the lights of Los Angeles in the distance.

None of these three sightings (which are merely random samples from my considerable collection of sightings of high strangeness index) lends itself to simple explanation. Nor, by definition, do any of the high $ \Sigma $ reports. It will be noted that nothing has yet been said about believing these reports.

As the next step in our proposed program, let us ask a panel of social scientists—psychologists and sociologists—to rate the credibility of the witnesses involved in the high $ \sum $ cases, singly and collectively, for any given sighting, without any reference whatever to the report itself. The panel is given dossiers on each of the witnesses. (But it would be best not to let this panel read the UFO reports it might prejudice them!) The dossiers include medical history, length of time and

general standing in the community, psychological and personality traits, a note on the willingness of the witnesses to take lie-detector tests (and the results of these, if administered), the technical backgrounds of the individual witnesses, the independence of the witnesses (were they strangers, blood relatives, friends?) and what has been garnered as to the motivation of making the report in the first place. Was there any overt attempt at publicity, or was the report made guardedly and out of a sense of duty? Was there any possibility of financial gain by having made the report? We shall call this rating the C, or credibility, rating.

The "credibility panel" must also be given a full account of the reaction of the witness under interrogation. A skilled investigator soon learns to watch for many clues as to the credibility of the witness. Psychotic or paranoid signals are many. The tendency to repeat certain phrases, the singsong retelling of an experience in a set, stereotyped manner, as though one is hearing a playback of a tape—all these are danger signals. And, of course, at the slightest hint from the UFO reporter of imaginary persecution, one may just as well drop the investigation. I have on occasion been told what seemed to be a straightforward story, when suddenly the witness lapsed into a highly confidential mood and told me that he was sure that his phone was being tapped or that he was being watched, sometimes on a regular schedule, either by "the Government" or by "occupants of the craft."

In my long experience with the UFO phenomenon, I have developed certain practices that quickly bring out these "credibility flaws." For instance, I will patiently listen to the account and then, as if to see that I have things straight, will repeat the highlights of the story, but making sure that in two or three spots I deliberately misstate some of the witness' descriptions (for example, directions, time estimates, etc.), to see whether the witness will quickly catch me up on the misstatement or let it pass. One quickly learns also to gauge the objectivity of the reporter. The most glaring fault on the part of the witness is to substitute interpretation of a fact for a fact. Thus, he may tell me, "The spaceship was patrolling the neighborhood and observing us," when the actual fact is that the witness observed a light meandering in the sky and read into that simple observation his interpretation that intelligent surveillance was being carried on.

One of the most frustrating experiences a UFO investigator can have is to be told, at the end of what seems to be a fairly straightforward story, that the witness has had similar experiences on many occasions in the past. We call these "repeaters." A person with so little