Prologue: To 1947

He who desires to reform the government of a state, and wishes to have it accepted andcapable of maintaining itself to the satisfaction of everybody, must at least retain thesemblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been nochange in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones.For the great majority of mankind are satisfied with appearances, as though they wererealities, and are often even more influenced by the things that seem than by those thatare.

—Niccolo Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Chapter XXV

UFOs Before World War Two

It is quite possible that UFOs have existed for millennia. A steady stream of reports—storiesmight be a better word—appears through the centuries, some of them suggestiveof modern reports. Of course, most of these stories were not about spaceships, althoughsome of them were. Rather, people interpreted what they saw in the terms and conceptsthey knew best: they saw fiery wheels or chariots in the sky, conversed with fairy folk, orhad visions of God, angels, and demons. While the accounts are certainly worthcollecting, there is not much we can do with them other than reflect on the possibilitiesthey suggest. Ultimately, they remain just stories.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the number of these stories spiked upward.Whether this means that more weird events were really taking place, or simply that morepeople were noticing them, is anybody's guess. Even today, some of these reports makefor interesting reading. The London Times of September 26, 1870, for example, describeda strange elliptical object that crossed the face of the moon. In November 1882,astronomer E. W. Maunder, a member of the Royal Observatory staff at Greenwich, noted"a strange celestial visitor" in his observational report. Others also saw this object, whichthey described as torpedo- or spindle-shaped. Years later Maunder said the object lookedexactly like a zeppelin, except that there were no zeppelins in 1882. Sightings werewidespread for the rest of the decade, occurring in Mexico, Turkey, Nova Scotia (a five-minutesighting in which shipmates saw a huge red object rise from the ocean, pause, andfly off rapidly), New Zealand, the Dutch East Indies, and elsewhere.

In 1897, the United States experienced the first modern wave of sightings. These were the"airships" which first appeared in San Francisco in late 1896 and moved eastward.Thousands of people, including astronomers, saw them, which typically had lights (usuallyred, green, or white), moved slowly, and seemed to be under intelligent control.Sometimes voices could be heard, whether in English or something unintelligible. On afew occasions, people claimed to see their occupants, and even to speak with them. Suchoutlandish sightings got some press. The New York Herald-Tribune described a sighting inChicago on April 9, 1897, that lasted from 8 P.M. until 2 A.M.:

Thousands of amazed persons declared that the lights seen in the northwest were thoseof an airship, or some floating object, miles above the earth.... Some declared that theycould distinguish two cigar-shaped objects and great wings.

Two giant searchlights apparently illuminated the object. Other, far stranger, incidentsoccurred. Explanations included many of the standard culprits of later ages: masshallucination and hysteria, experimental aircraft (private, not military), opium-induceddreams, hoaxes, or all of the above.

The 1897 airship sightings were the most remarkable of the pre-1940s era. But othernoteworthy UFO events also took place, including one in western China in 1926 by theparty of explorer Nicholas Roerich. In his book, Altai—Himalaya, Roerich described thesighting as an "interesting occurrence." As he related, his party noticed a high-flying shinyobject. The group brought "three powerful field glasses" and watched a "huge spheroidbody shining in the sun, clearly visible against the blue sky, and moving very fast." Roerichand his party were certain they saw something real. What was it? What would be flyinglike that in the western China desert—in 1926? No answer ever emerged.

These early reports are intriguing, but offer few avenues for further research. UFOsappeared sporadically, elicited minimal response from the public and authorities, and werepromptly forgotten. One wonders, in any event, what kind of response would have beenpossible?

The Second World War changed all this. Before the war, airplanes were scarce and radarnonexistent—by the war's end, both were global. In other words, it became much, mucheasier to detect strange aerial phenomena after 1940. Since military personnel were themain users of radar and airplanes, they might naturally be expected to encounter moreUFOs than the average person—and they most certainly did. Let us take a moment toreview some key developments of the American military and national securityestablishment.

The National Security Connection

When UFO skeptics claim that hiding something as significant as alien visitation isimpossible, they should study some of the secrets that were kept for many, many years. Averitable secrecy industry exists in the modern world, complete with its own standardoperating procedures and tricks of the trade.

The granddaddy of all secret projects was the Manhattan Project, the program to designand build an atomic bomb during the Second World War. More than any other program, ithelped to forge the American military-industrial establishment, and served as a model forfuture secret projects. One of its key contributions was its secret—or black—budget.When President Roosevelt learned that such a weapon might be feasible, the best guesswas that it would cost $100 million. The actual cost ballooned to a mammoth $2.19 billion,over twenty times the original estimate. Getting that much money through traditionalmeans (i.e., congressional approval) raised the dual problem of asking Congress toauthorize outlays that were unprecedented while at the same time alerting the enemy tothe Allies' most important military weapon. The money, therefore, had to be hidden fromCongress. Roosevelt told his science advisor, Vannevar Bush, he could draw upon hiddenfunding, "a special source available for such an unusual expense." Most of the money forthe project was disguised in two line items in the military budget, and the rest was buriedin other appropriations. The secrecy of the Manhattan Project was so remarkable thatwhen the scientists at Los Alamos laboratory exploded an atomic device on U.S. soil inJuly 1945, the most decisive...