UFO,s Over Earth by John Kuykendall

When an idea as unacceptable as that embodied by the Un­identified Flying Object (UFO) presents itself, we tend to play a game of self-deception in order to avoid the necessity of facing up to anything resembling a final judgment-at least until time and repetition lower our threshold of acceptance. We go through the motions of appealing to Authorities for answers, but we make certain that we choose Authorities whose hands have been carefully tied by convention and precedent­ thus the answers willbe safe ones. Recent national attention given to a number of cases in this country suggests to me that we may be tiring of the game. Various public information media seem to be awakening simul­ taneously to the ominous importance of the subject. In 1953 a scientific committee convened at United States Air Force (USAF) request and among other things recommended that the UFO be publicly debunked. Air I:orce public information policy has followed this guideline for sisty years but it hasn't worked too well lately; this year they went back to com­mittee. I do not align myself with those who make their chief work the denigration of the USAF program. I feel that these groups are dealing with an unconsciously contrived substitute problem. Their efforts tend to elevate official public information state­ ments to an importance which they do not merit,while con­tributing little or nothing to the advancement of the general body of knowledge of UFOs. An underlying premise with me is that the UFO problem is planetary in scope-it knows no national boundaries. It is my feeling that the evidence should be allowed to provide the answers; therefore I present the evidence with as little pre­ judgment as possible and suggest such meanings and patterns as seem to be valid. I hope that this, the result of fifteen years' work, is helpful in elucidating some final answers-and I hope it is not too late.