Project Blue Book documents on the Killian case, compiled by Dan Wilson

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

## THE INEVITABLE SILENCING

As of this writing, Captain Killian is no longer discussing his sighting of the three unknown objects. After his initial comments in newspapers, exposing the obvious flaws in the Air Force's explanations, the muzzle was quickly applied. American Airlines, through Air Force insistence, was forced to silence Killian, their attitude being that good relations with officialdom must be maintained at all costs. Consequently, he was requested not to publicize "so controversial a subject". (It would certainly seem that the Air Force Public Information subordinates at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., have contributed their share to the "controversy" by persistently manipulating UFO facts in a manner that could breed nothing else but confusion.)

When Killian, in a private telephone conversation, was asked to comment on this, he said, "Let's put it this way; my company doesn't want me to talk about it any more." And later he added, "I feel very deeply concerned with this loss of my own personal freedom."

To illustrate how the subject reached controversial proportions, the following is presented:

## July 5, 1947

Air Corps Spokesman at the Pentagon: "No investigation is needed. The saucers are only hallucinations."

## July 7, 1947

Air Corps Public Relations Officer at the Pentagon: "We can't ignore this. Too many reliable pilots are telling the same story - flat, round objects, able to out-maneuver ordinary planes and faster than anything we have. Too many stories tally. We have a jet at Muroc and fighters at Portland standing by."

## July 7, 1947

An Air Force Spokesman at the Pentagon: "The flying saucers may be one of three things - solar reflections small meteors or icing conditions."

## July 7 1947

Pentagon statement to all press services: "Army Air Intelligence officers since July 2 have been investigating reports of unidentified objects flying at very high speeds in various sections of the country. No such phenomena can be explained by any experiments being conducted by the Army or Air Force, and the statements of witnesses are being correlated in an effort to identify the reported objects."

## September 23, 1947

Official analysis report from ATIC to General Hoyt Vandenberg. Commanding General Army Air Corps: "The reported phenomena are real."

## July 24, 1948

General George C. Kenney, then chief of the Strategic Air Command, after the so called "space ship" sighting by the pilots and a passenger of an Eastern Air Line plane: "We're completely mystified. We have nothing remotely like the machine described. I wish we did."

## August (date withheld)

Top secret estimate of the situation by ATIC later declassified but never released, stating that the flying saucers were interplanetary space ships.

## January 3, 1949

Air Corps statement to press after death of Captain Thomas Mantell, Jr., World War II ace. "Captain Mantell was killed while in pursuit of a flying saucer."