John A. Keel WHY UFOS

confusing, and misleading the human race. The activitiesof these entities have been carefully recorded throughouthistory, and we will be leaning heavily on those historicalrecords in this book.Recently the U.S. Government Printing Office issued apublication compiled by the Library of Congress for theAir Force Office of Scientific Research: UFOs and RelatedSubjects: An Annotated Bibliography. In preparing thiswork, the senior bibliographer, Miss Lynn E. Catoe,actually read thousands of UFO articles, books, andpublications. In her preface to this 400-page book shestates:A large part of the available UFO literature is closely linkedwith mysticism and the metaphysical. It deals with subjects likemental telepathy, automatic writing, and invisible entities, aswell as phenomena like poltergeist manifestations andpossession Many of the UFO reports now being publishedin the popular press recount alleged incidents that are strikinglysimilar to demoniac possession and psychic phenomena whichhas long been known to theologians and parapsychologists.Dr. Edward U. Condon, the physicist who headedColorado University's Air Force-financed two-year UFOstudy, has been criticized because he devoted part of histime to examining the claims of the controversialcontactees. He earned the undying wrath of the cultistswhen his final report was published in January, 1969, andhe stressed an antiextraterrestrial conclusion. He assertedthat his scientific teams had failed to find any evidence ofextraterrestrial origin or of serious UFO censorship on thepart of the government. But both of these myths have beenimplanted too deeply in the UFO literature to be killed offso easily. The Library of Congress' objective bibliographyeven had sections devoted to news management, censorship,and CIA plots. Was all of this just anothergovernment whitewash, as the cultists contend?In April, 1969, Dr. Condon delivered a speech beforethe American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, inwhich he was gently derisive of the popular UFO beliefs:"Some UFOs may be such [extraterrestrial] visitors, itmay be postulated," Dr. Condon said, "and some writersgo so far as to say that they actually are. To discover clear,unambiguous evidence on this point would be a scientificdiscovery of the first magnitude, one which I would be