Immediately an international furor broke out. Were these pictures indeed proof of extraterrestrial spaceships, or were they a hoax, with the Brazilian President and the Brazilian Navy as victims? Who were the witnesses, and exactly what did they report? In the United States, high officials asked for copies of the pictures. An editor of _Look_ magazine asked Dr. Menzel to fly to Brazil to evaluate the evidence, but later canceled the plan when the Rio office advised that the photographs were generally considered fraudulent. Public excitement in Brazil became so great that on February 23 the Naval Ministry released an official statement, distinguished by its air of caution, which concluded: “Clearly this Ministry will not be able to make any pronouncement concerning the reality of the object seen because the photographs do not constitute sufficient proof for this purpose.”[X-18] The day after the pictures were published the _Almirante Saldanha_, which had been lying outside the harbor at Rio, received orders to sail. Not until February 24, when the ship docked at Santos, did newsmen have a chance to interview the officers and crewmen who allegedly had observed the Trindade saucer and could support Barauna’s story. None of them, it turned out, had actually seen the object. The Assistant Naval Attaché of the United States, who was then in Santos in connection with the visit of the U. S. Coast Guard cutter _Westwind_, visited the Brazilian ship to collect information about the Trindade saucer, but with little success. The commanding officer stated that he had not seen the alleged UFO; he had seen the pictures but refused to express an opinion on their authenticity; he stated that his secretary might have seen the UFO but the secretary, when questioned, preferred not to discuss the matter. The executive officer said that he had not been on deck at the time of the sighting, but that other persons might have seen the object. During the next week arguments for and against the authenticity of the photographs filled the Brazilian papers, and _O Globo_ published deliberately faked views of a “flying saucer”--a china plate tossed into the air. A federal deputy in an official note to the Naval Ministry deplored their amazing failure to procure sworn statements from the officers and crewmen who were reported to have witnessed the UFO.