[XII-1a] Menzel, D. H. “The Truth About Flying Saucers.” _Look_ magazine (June 17, 1952). [XII-2] Johnson, C. L. Personal communication. [XII-3] _UFO Investigator_, April-May 1961. [XII-4] Coleman, W. T. Personal communication. [XII-5] Nash, W. B. Personal communication. [XII-6] Ruppelt, E. J. _The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects._ Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1956. [XII-7] Nash, W. B., and Fortenberry, W. H. “We Flew Above Flying Saucers,” _True_ magazine (October 1952). [XII-8] Boston _Herald_, June 3, 1962. [XII-9] “Radar Objects Over Washington,” _Air Weather Service Bulletin_ (September 1954), pp. 52–57. [XII-10] Gifford, J. F. Personal communication. [XII-11] “Have We Visitors from Outer Space?” _Life_ magazine, April 4, 1952. [XII-12] “Flying Saucers, the Enigma of the Skies,” Armstrong Circle Theatre TV Script, Jan. 22, 1958. [XII-13] Michel, A. _The Truth about Flying Saucers._ New York: Criterion Books, 1956. [XII-14] Tombaugh, C. W. Personal communication. _Chapter_ XIII INVESTIGATORS: AIR FORCE AND CIVILIAN Few government employees in recent times have been subjected to more criticism than the men in the Aerial Phenomena Group at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. This agency (usually referred to in this book as ATIC) has the responsibility of investigating all official reports of unidentified objects in our skies. Of the thousands of such incidents studied so far, none suggests that the UFO in question came from outer space. In fact, the term UFO has proven to be one of the worst misnomers of history. In the most perplexing cases, the phenomena reported are seldom material Objects, very few of them are Flying and, when fully analyzed, almost none remain Unidentified. Identifying strange objects in the air over the United States is vital to the country’s security. That military officers should be guilty of carelessness or casual guesswork in this serious business is unthinkable. Yet ATIC investigators, and through them the United States Air Force, of which they are members, for more than a decade have been the target of vicious attacks by civilian enthusiasts devoted to the cult of flying saucers. Banded together in various “research” organizations and operating on the premise that UFOs are interplanetary in origin, most of these enthusiasts flatly reject the normal explanations--planets, meteors, satellites, balloons, reflections, birds, radar phantoms, hoaxes, or delusions. Flying saucers _obviously_ cruise in our skies, the believers argue, and the Air Force failure to admit the obvious proves that its investigators are incompetent or dishonest or both, and that they are involved in a giant conspiracy to conceal the truth from the American public[XIII-1].