Flying Saucers: Top Secret

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On a flight to Los Angeles a Trans World Airlines pilot reported dodging an Unidentified Flying Object to avoid a head-on collision. A CAA control-tower operator reported tracking four UFOs at 3,600 miles per hour, one over an Air Force base. From the Far East, an F-86 jet pilot reported chasing a huge saucer. Such accounts are not unusual. Air Force files contain over 6,300 cases of saucer sightings, some of them still top secret. They include statements from airline pilots verifying simultaneous sightings by as many as four different aircraft; records of unexplained crashes of pursuit planes which took off to investigate UFOs that appeared on radar screens; reports of jet plans firing on saucers. The official Air Force position on such sightings: Flying saucers do not exist.

Most cases of saucer sightings never reach the general public. An Air Force policy of secrecy, backed by stiff security regulations, prevents the dissemination of information about UFOs. Cases which do receive public attention have been explained away or denied and witnesses discredited. As a result, observers are reluctant to report sightings and most newspapers have printed only the official Air Force line.

Air Force policy has been opposed on occasion by private individuals, but its most effective opponent is the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, a private organization devoted to the study of Unidentified Flying Objects. The story of NICAP's fight to crack the wall of secrecy around the government's flying saucer investigation is revealed in FLYING SAUCERS: TOP SECRET. It documents the Air Force's contradictory statements about the secrecy policy, NICAP's efforts to get reports of UFO sightings from both the government and private sources, and the efforts of the Air Force to silence flying saucer observers. It also included a complete listing of data available to any Congressional committee which might take up a full-scale investigation.