John A. Keel WHY UFOS

Already we can arrive at one disturbing conclusionbased upon these basic factors of behavior. If these lightsare actually machines operated by intelligent entities, theyobviously don't want to be caught. They come in the deadof night, operating in areas where the risks of beingobserved are slight. They pick the middle of the week fortheir peak activities, and they confine themselves rathermethodically to the political boundaries of specific states atspecific times. All of this smacks uneasily of a covertmilitary operation, a secret buildup in remote areas.Unfortunately, it is not all this simple. The first majorUFO flap in the Midwest took place in 1897. There'ssomething else going on here. If secrecy is "their" goal, thenboth our newspaper wire services and our governmenthave happily been obliging them. What are the reasons?And, more important, what are the pitfalls? If strangeunidentified flying machines are operating freely in ourmidst, I wonder if we can really accept what Secretary ofDefense McNamara told the House Committee on ForeignAffairs on March 30, 1966: "I think that every report so farhas been investigated," he said. "And in every instance wehave found a more reasonable explanation than that itrepresents an object from outer space or a potential threatto our security."The newspapers of March 9, 1967, quoted Dr. J. AllenHynek as dismissing a number of the March 8 sightings asbeing the planet Venus. But I worry about the report of twoErie, Pennsylvania, policemen, William Rutledge andDonald Peck, who said they watched a strange light overLake Erie for two hours on Wednesday, August 3, 1966. Itappeared as a bright light when they first noticed it at 4:45A.M. It moved east, they said, stopped, turned red, anddisappeared. A moment later it reappeared and was now abluish white. They watched it until 6:55 A.M. AS the suncame up and dawn flooded the sky, the object ceased to bea mere light. It became a definite silvery object, possiblymetallic, and finally it headed north toward Canada anddisappeared.Could all of these other strange lights in the sky also besilver metallic objects when viewed in daylight? If so. thenwe can forget about all of the theories of swamp gas,meteors, plasma, and natural phenomena that have beenbandied about by the skeptics for the past twenty years.