417 lines
24 KiB
Plaintext
417 lines
24 KiB
Plaintext
SUBJECT: ALIEN BODIES AT WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB FILE: UFO2389
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Filename: Basement.Art
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Type : Article
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Author : Frank Kuznik
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Date : 08/??/92
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Desc : Article on Alien bodies at Wright-Patterson AFB
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Note : Original From Air & Space Magizine Vol 7, Num 3 (Page 34)
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It's the story that won't die.
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A legion of UFO buffs is convinced that
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Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
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is hiding...
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ALIENS IN THE BASEMENT
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The official fact sheet on 'Project Blue Book', the Air Force program
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that investigated 12,000-plus unidentified flying object sightings from
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1947 to 1969, reads like your standard military briefing paper -- until
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the very end. Then it drops this incredible disclaimer: "There are not
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now, nor have there ever been, any extraterrestrial visitors or
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equipment on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base."
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Little alien corpses kept frozen and hidden away on an Ohio military
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base may sound like sci-fi lunacy to the uninitiated. But for 45 years,
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this is one UFO story that's refused to go away. And for that the
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military has mostly itself to blame. It was, after all, Roswell Army
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Air Field in New Mexico that started the whole business in the summer
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of 1947 by announcing that it had recovered a crashed "flying disc".
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Never mind that they were quick to say, No, wait, make that a weather
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balloon. Over the last decade in particular, a small army of authors,
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researchers, and TV hucksters has done a highly imaginative job of
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filling in the details of the "Roswell Incident," as it's come to be
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known. Unlike most UFO yarns, their stories are based on enough
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interviews, photographs, and other evidence to seem...well, not
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impossible.
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Ultimately all the stories lead to Wright-Patterson, the headquarters
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of 'Project Blue Book' and the site where the wreckage of the spaceship
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and the bodies of its crew were allegedly taken for analysis. Then they
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come to an abrupt halt. "We know the material was taken to Wright-Pat,"
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Mark Rodeghier of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies says. "But
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that's where the trail grows very cold: we don't have any sources
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there."
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That's enough to get the gears of any redblooded space writer racing.
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What if I could spend some time poking around the labs at Wright-
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Patterson? There's no telling what I might find. Admittedly, the odds
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of actually coming back with the goods are slim. But as longtime UFO
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investigator Don Berliner points out, "It's potentially the biggest
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story ever."
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My first contact with the base public relations staff makes me think
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I might be on to something. "The little green men story? I get three
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calls a week about it," says Major Aurelia Blake. She assures me
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there's no crashed saucer or alien corpses under wraps, but says I'm
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welcome to tour the base. A few hours later, however, she calls back.
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"Why don't you think about doing something else?", she asks. "We've got
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some great wind tunnels here."
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The Roswell Incident dovetails with the birth of the modern era of
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flying saucers, so named in June 1947 when a private pilot reported
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seeing nine disc-shaped objects flying over Washington's Mt. Ranier
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"like saucers skipping on water." That sighting triggered a nationwide
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wave of UFO reports that made headlines for months afterwards.
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Far and away the wildest headlines came out of Roswell, where two
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weeks after the Mt. Ranier sightings a sheep farmer named Mac Brazel
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clumped into the sheriff's office to report something he couldn't
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identify cluttering one of his fields -- something, he said, that had
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fallen out of the sky and broken into shiny pieces.
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Brazel's ranch lay some 75 miles northwest of Roswell near a tiny
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town called Corona, in a stretch of scrub desert neatly triangulated by
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what were then arguably the three most security-sensitive military
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installations in the world: the Roswell Army Air Field, home of the
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509th Bomb Group, the world's only atomic bomb squadron; Los Alamos,
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where the bomb had been developed and was still being refined; and the
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White Sands Missile Range. Not surprisingly, Sheriff George Wilcox
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suggested that Brazel report his find to authorities at the nearby
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Roswell base.
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After sending two officers out to reconnoiter the crash site and
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retrieve some samples, the 509th brass went ballistic, mounting a full-
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scale recovery effort and firing off its "flying disc" press release.
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On Tuesday, July 8, newspapers across the country carried headlines
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announcing that Roswell Army Air Field had captured a flying saucer.
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The next day, though, many carried a follow-up story explaining that
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the wreckage wasn't a flying saucer after all. After being flown to
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Fort Worth Army Air Field, it was identified as the remains of a
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weather balloon. An Associated Press wire story that ran in a number of
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papers on July 9 described the wreckage as "consisting of large numbers
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of pieces of paper covered with a foil-like substance, and pieced
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together with small sticks, much like a kite. Scattered with the
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materials over an area about 200 yards across were pieces of gray
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rubber."
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Before my trip to Wright-Patterson, I tracked down Walter Haut, the
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retired base public information officer who wrote the infamous press
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release, and asked him if he ever actually saw the wreckage. "No, and I
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feel like an idiot every time somebody asks me that," he said ruefully.
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"I got a call from the base commander, who basically dictated what was
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in the press release."
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And how did he feel when the bottom dropped out of the story? "I
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probably wiped the perspiration from my brow and said Thank Goodness,
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we're of the hook now," he said. "Very frankly, I don't think I
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believed that we had something from outer space. I think most of us
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felt we were being hoodwinked somewhere down the pike."
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This is not, incidentally, what Haut believes today. "I feel there
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was a crash of an extraterrestrial vehicle near Corona," he says
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firmly. What happened in the intervening 45 years to change his mind?
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For a long time, not much. Nobody questioned the military in 1947, so
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when the captured disc metamorphosed into a weather balloon, the
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explanation was accepted and the story largely forgotten. It was a
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revival of the Roswell story in the '70s that convinced Haut and
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thousands of others that the Air Force really hadn't been on the up and
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up. It began inauspiciously in the person of Stanton Friedman, a
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nuclear physicist and well-traveled UFO lecturer. At his talks,
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Friedman would occasionally meet people who had been in New Mexico in
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1947. Bit by bit, their stories began to form a picture startlingly
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different from the official version's. Friedman dug further with the
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help of a friend, William Moore, who in turn enlisted writer Charles
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Berlitz of Bermuda Triangle fame to turn their findings into a book
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published in 1980 called 'The Roswell Incident'.
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The book blows off the weather balloon explanation as a hastily
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concocted cover story and argues that the Air Force really did recover
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a crashed saucer, as well as several alien bodies. The wreckage and
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bodies were taken to Wright-Patterson for analysis, it said, and
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everyone involved in collecting, transporting, and studying them became
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part of a massive conspiracy of silence. There's a lot of chaff in 'The
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Roswell Incident', including some blatant hokum about Gemini and Apollo
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astronauts spotting flying saucers. But the main idea -- that the
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government was sitting on a captured saucer -- fell on some fertile
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ground. Other books followed, including last year's 'UFO Crash at
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Roswell'. Television found the story irresistible. The series 'In
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Search Of' did an episode on it. A trashy 1988 production called 'UFO
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Cover-up? Live' featured two mysterious "intelligence sources" who
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revealed that the captured aliens like Tibetan music and strawberry ice
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cream. And in September 1989, 'Unsolved Mysteries' featured the story
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on its season premiere, attracting an impressive 28 million viewers.
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The captured saucer idea even took root overseas. "I was visiting
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Kapustin Yar, a Soviet missile base, two years ago when the head of the
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base asked me if we had any UFOs," recalls Gregg Herken, chairman of
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the National Air and Space Museum's department of space history. "I
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thought he was kidding at first, but he turned out to be quite
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serious."
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It's a good thing the Soviet commander never saw the UFO exhibit in
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the world-famous United States Air Force Museum adjacent to Wright-
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Patterson, which the PR staff had encouraged me to check out before
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coming to the base. It turns out to be a single glass case filled with
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fake photos and hoax items that wouldn't cut it on the old Flash Gordon
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serials. A blob of melted plastic, a big hunk of cinder, a crumpled
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metal ball stuffed with radio tubes, springs, and speedometer cable --
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this is it? An Air Force museum so comprehensive it has a wall covered
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with the history of spark plugs , and there's nothing to show for 23
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years of UFO investigations but a pile of rusty junk? Very odd.
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On to the base itself, a vast tract bigger than half of Dayton's
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suburbs. An alien rescue team could search the place for six months and
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not find their friends. But I know where to look. One place is the
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infamous Hangar 18, where the bodies were allegedly stored in deep
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freeze. Another is Wright Laboratory, one of four Air Force
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"superlabs," where nearly $1 billion is spent annually on research in
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propulsion and power, avionics, materials, electronics, and the like.
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If they learned anything from the saucer, there should be signs of it
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in the labs. I also, want to see the Foreign Aerospace Science and
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Technology Center, the secret facility where the Air Force takes apart
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foreign aircraft to see what makes them tick.
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The first thing I learn is that there is no Hanger 18. There's a
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Building 18 complex that at one time housed "cold cells," rooms that
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could be cooled to sub-zero temperatures to test engines under Arctic
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conditions. In 18A I meet Fred Oliver, a folksy division chief and
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engineer who's become the base spokesman on the subject of aliens. He
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commiserates with me in my disappointment at finding generic government
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offices. "I know," he says, "you picture walking into a building with a
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big curved top where you go through all these guards, and run your card
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through a cipher lock, then there's this spaceship going 'rrrrr, rrrrr'
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that gives off a green glow."
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Exactly. How does he know that scene in such detail? Before I can
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ask, he's deep into a Viewgraph briefing. You can't meet anybody at
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Wright-Patterson without getting a Viewgraph briefing; it's as
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automatic as a handshake. It's also a lot like the lessons you used to
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get in high school on overhead projectors, except that instead of
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scrawled equations or French verb conjugations you get to look at big
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bright slides of organization charts and turbine engines. Finally
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Oliver works his way to the bottom of a six-inch stack of slides and
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asks, "Any questions?"
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"Where are the bodies?"
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"There are no bodies," he says kindly, like a dad breaking the bad
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news about the tooth fairy. But if a saucer did crash-land, wouldn't
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the remains be at Wright-Patterson? "That's a sensible conclusion," he
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admits. "Since the beginning of time, this has been the nation's center
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of aerospace R&D."
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I suggest that a good strategy for hiding aliens might be to act like
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you've got nothing to hide, bring reporters on base, then overwhelm
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them with Viewgraphs. "And walk them till they drop," Oliver agrees.
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"I'm going to get in trouble for saying this, but give us some credit -
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- wouldn't you think we'd be smart enough to hide the bodies if they
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were here? Do you really think you'd get to see them?"
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In any case, after a tour of the Building 18 complex, it's clear I'm
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not going to see them there. The cold cells are long gone, gutted and
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replaced with recon-camera maintenance and repair shops and testing
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equipment. The basement of 18A has a huge facility that can pump
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pressure- and temperature-controlled air to a number of "environmental
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chambers," but there's nothing resembling a 24-hour cryogenic
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operation. If the bodies were here, they're gone now.
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My next interview is with Keith Richey, chief scientist of Wright
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Laboratory. The determined set of his face tells me he obviously has
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better things to do with his time that talk about aliens. "Do you have
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the Air Force fact sheet on Project Blue Book?" he asks as soon as I
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broach the subject. "My own personal knowledge corroborates that. So
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that's where we are on that subject."
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Richey has fascinating tales to tell of running a superlab and
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developing the kind of weaponry we saw in Desert Storm and how we'll be
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able to launch the next generation of smart bombs from hundreds of
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miles away instead of just a few and still park them up somebody's
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keister. Eventually I steer the conversation back to aerodynamics and
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ask how efficient a saucer shape would be for flying.
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"Well, it's not very efficient," Richey says. "What you want is a
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multiplication factor of 20 times the lift for the amount of drag you
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generate, and it doesn't generate much lift."
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I try a different tack. What if something dropped out of the sky
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tomorrow and was brought to Wright Laboratory for analysis? Could
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Richey and his 2,000 scientists and engineers figure out what makes it
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go?
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"We could do it," he says, pride getting the best of his no-nonsense
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demeanor. "We could take it apart, analyze it, and I don't know how
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long it would take, but with enough effort we could find out what it
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would do." So presumably if a saucer had shown up at the base in
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'47...? Richey doesn't hesitate. "You would have seen it flying. You
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would probably be buying tickets for it by now."
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Before I can weigh the implications of that remark, I'm hustled off
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to the Flight Dynamics lab for a Viewgraph briefing by Colonel Dick
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Borowski. A congenial fighter pilot who saw action in Vietnam, Borowski
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smiles and says, "I know you came looking for little green men," then
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unleashes a dazzling overview of the new technologies his division is
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developing. Acoustic's testing. Thermoplastics. Forebody vortex flow
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control. Flight simulation. By the time he's done, I'm too dazed to ask
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him where he's hiding the bodies.
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My pulse quickens as I'm led down a maze of hallways and through a
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heavily locked door by Richard Moss, chief of cockpit development. No
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bodies in the inner sanctum, though -- just a series of rooms with
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liquid crystal display screens in various test stages. The first one
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shows a simplistic terrain with targets in the air and on the ground,
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all irritatingly out of focus. "Here, put these on," a technician says,
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handing me a pair of Captain Video sunglasses with tiny on/off buttons
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on the frames.
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"Are these a souvenir?" I ask her.
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She laughs. "Those cost $2,000."
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I look at the screen, where suddenly everything is not only in focus
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but in 3D. There's a truck in the forefront, then some mountains, then
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-- wait a minute! A saucer-shaped object is hovering in the sky.
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"That's a flying saucer," I tell the tech excitedly.
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She squints at the screen. "The red thing? I don't know what that
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is." She looks at Moss.
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"That's a transport aircraft," he says.
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There's more rooms and more screens, but I'm too preoccupied to pay
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attention. When Moss finally escorts me from the building, he gives me
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a meaningful look and says, "You've only seen the tip of the iceberg."
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I start my second day at Wright-Patterson in the museum research
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library, hoping to find the original Roswell documents that will cut
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through some of the hype. When I tell the librarian what I'm looking
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for, he gets a pained look and barks, "Every time they run that damned
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Roswell thing in the tabloids all the crazies come out. The old man
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[museum director Richard Uppstrom] says he wishes we had one of the
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bodies to put downstairs and charge a dollar a pop to see. We'd never
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have to ask Congress for money again."
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Disappointingly, the museum's UFO files are in the same league as its
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UFO exhibit. There's a ton of Blue Book summary reports along with
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University of Colorado and National Academy of Sciences studies
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agreeing with the Air Force's conclusion that UFOs don't merit serious
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attention. There's a detailed aerodynamic analysis of virtually every
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shape UFOs have ever taken, pronouncing them all "impracticable." And
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in year after year of briefing papers, there are remarks like this one:
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"It is unlikely that positive proof of [flying saucers] existence will
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be obtained without examination of the remains of crashed objects."
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Exactly.
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This afternoon's lab run is through the materials directorate, where
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after the obligatory Snoozegraph briefing I'm handed off to Lieutenant
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Colonel James Hansen. He's got a basement full of wild machinery that
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tests composite metals and ceramics for the National Aerospace Plane,
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the hypersonic hybrid that will fly into space.
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No bodies here either. But watching strips of exotic metals being
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tortured under incredible heat and pressure, I realize I may be a lot
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closer to pieces of a crashed saucer than I think. I ask Hansen the
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same question I asked Richey yesterday about analyzing something that
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dropped out of the sky -- only this time in the past tense.
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"If somebody had brought in composite material 20 years ago, we
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wouldn't have had any idea what it was," he admits. "Now, we could take
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it apart down to its atoms." Suddenly it all begins to add up -- the
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glowing spaceship scene Oliver described, Richey's cryptic boast about
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selling tickets, the saucer on the screen, and now Hansen's admission
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that we've only recently been able to figure out composites. It's taken
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nearly 40 years to crack the secrets of the Roswell wreckage.
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And today we're developing a freak craft that can take off from a
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runway and fly into space -- just like flying saucers do.
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Coincidence? Think about it.
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My last shot at finding the bodies is the super-secret Foreign
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Technology center. It took negotiations on the order of a Middle East
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peace conference to get an appointment there, and I'm pleased to see
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that the public information officer waiting for me is a novice filling
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in for someone who just quit. No telling where she might take me.
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We drive around the building first. It's a nondescript red and gray
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affair, like a warehouse in a suburban industrial park, only a lot
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bigger. My guide confides that you need top-secret clearance to get
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almost anywhere inside. "It's basically a huge safe," she says.
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We park at the front entrance, greet an officer on the way out, and
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step into what might be the lobby of Krupp's Widget Works -- except for
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the heavy-duty security desk with the big control panel. I look at my
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guide and make an expectant move toward the desk. She doesn't budge.
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"That's it," she says.
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"That's it?"
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"That's all you can see."
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And that's that.
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No flying saucer story would be complete without an anonymous highly
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placed military source who spills A Big Secret. Mine didn't materialize
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until I got back to Washington, where I brooded for days over what I
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had seen -- or hadn't seen, actually.
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Studying a map of New Mexico got me thinking about all the secret
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flying and testing that was done at Roswell and Los Alamos and White
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Sands after the war. If there was ever a place where something the
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military wanted kept under wraps was likely to fall from the sky, it
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was central New Mexico in 1947. That thought prompted me to call my
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source -- a retired Air Force officer I met while touring Wright-
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Patterson who is, alas, still in a position to sensitive to allow his
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name to be used. He was way ahead of me.
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"All these years I've been hearing about this Roswell incident," he
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said, "and knowing Air Force history like I do, and how hush-hush the
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509th was, I just set it in my mind that they must have crashed with a
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nuke that came close to going off, or maybe [exploded but with] a low-
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level yield that we don't know about. I could never prove anything one
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way or another. But with the 509th that close, and -- well, B-29s
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weren't noted for not crashing, let's put it that way."
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It's a nifty theory, but just a theory. Like all good stories,
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Roswell expands to accommodate whatever you bring to it. That's the
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nature of myths and legends -- they're detailed enough to seem real,
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yet fuzzy enough to stay always just beyond the reach of objective
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proof.
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In that sense, it was better that I didn't find any bodies. Naturally
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I'm disappointed at not having broken the biggest story of all time.
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But I've done my part for the legend. Substantive or not, Roswell grows
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a little with each retelling. And this one lets you have it both ways.
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If you prefer a purely rational, scientific world, you can take comfort
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in the fact that my mission was -- just as you knew it would be --
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doomed to failure.
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If you prefer a world filled with mystery and intrigue, well, I
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haven't disturbed that either. The Air Force is still covering up a
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big-time screw-up...or just now cracking the secret of interstellar
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propulsion...or sitting on the biggest cosmic kick in the pants since
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the Big Bang.
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Whatever.
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**********************************************
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* THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo *
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********************************************** |