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This Project Blue Book file on the Socorro, New Mexico sighting of 24 April 1964 compiles an Air Force record card and a large set of press clippings. The clippings cover policeman Lonnie Zamora's report of an egg-shaped object with four landing marks and scorched brush, plus J. Allen Hynek's investigation and follow-up reports from La Madera, Edgewood and elsewhere. An Air Force summary says soil and brush analysis found no foreign material, radiation or propellant, that the case remains open, and that later related sightings were explained or found to be hoaxes.
“Socorro, New Mexico”54 pages
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matters is to determine whether UFO reports contain any hostile elements. If they do not, it is not in the Air Force charter, so to speak, to conduct lengthy investigations as to the nature of the stimulus that gave rise to the report. Of course, I have come to regard all this as rather a huhby; there is such a delicious variety of reports and of the people making them. As long as it does not take too much time, I enjoy talking to people who have made the reports and, of course, waste no time on them as soon as I discover they are off the beam. But take these two graduate students in anthropology at the University of Wisconsin; they live in a typical sort of house that young married graduate students live in, with some avant-garde paintings and a scattering of New Yorkers and the ubiquitous hi-fi set. They are people that you and I know and have associated most of our lives. I honestly would like to be able to give their case the time I think it deserves. This would mean not only re-emoting the crime with them and visiting the locale of the sighting under similar temporal and meteorological conditions, but it might involve house-to-house canvass of people in the area. You made mention in your letter that "had the sighting been related to a bank robbery or murder some rather obvious clues might have been better followed." I heartily agree. If a good UFO case were related to a counterfeit or narcotics ring, think of the funds the government would spend in tracking down every possible alue. But I guess that it would be hard to justify the expenditure of taxpayers' money just to satisfy your and my curiosity. Some of the cases that we have classed as "ball lightning" should certainly have been followed up more closely. I think, because as in the Lock Raven Dam Case, ball lightning that is several feet in diameter and lasts many minutes might lead to the solution of the magnetic bottle problem! Is it really possible for ball lightning to be so large and to last so long? Naturally, the first thing is to find out whether it really was that large and whether it really did last that long? Naturally, the first thing is to find out whether it really was that large and whether it really did last that long. This could be a full time job! Vallee's book will be published June 15. I have acceded to his request, somewhat reluctantly, to be quoted on the dust jacket to the effect that his suggestion that UFO's be given indireased scientific attention should be given serious consideration. This is, of course, what I have been saying all along because a mystery makes me uncomfortable, and I don't like to have these unidentified things hanging around, particularly when they are capitali on by the cultists, etc. I would really like to see a really good report made by several witnesses of good intelligence investigated to the bone and then to have a paper written on the case, much in the manner a M. D. would write up a case study of an extra large goiter or a rare tropical disease. I would like to see them written up as "The Case of the Lighted Bridge" or "The Case of the Toledo Lights" or "The Case of the Baffled Anthropologists." Vallee's book, incidentally, is entitled Anatomy of a Phenomenon and makes for good reading. Coming back to the Socorro case: I'm sorry that I couldn't have been of any more help. Both Quintanilla and I find it impossible to dismiss it as a hoax unless we have some evidence that there was a hoax. I feel that if it was a hoax, this fact must leak out sooner or later if we keep in touch with some citizens of Socorro over a considerable length of time. Perhaps this is our best means of attacking this particular problem. I am to visit
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