Brad was disappointed because the rest of the day ended
up a total waste. He had tried to get on to Nellis Air
Force Base, but wasn't able to get past the gate without
stating the purpose of his visit. At one gate, he said he
was visiting a friend, but the guard checked the name he had
made up against a base directory. When he saw that the
friend didn't exist, Brad explained that the man was
temporarily assigned to the base. When Brad wasn't able to
provide a phone number, the guard explained that he wasn't
suppose to let "just anyone" through the gate.
For a moment he considered using Major Dandridge as a
contact, but was afraid the guard might call and tell the
Major that Brad was on his way to see him. When Brad never
arrived at the office, Dandridge would become suspicious,
and call out the dogs. If the man did find him, Brad would
have a hard time explaining the fake name he had given him.
Besides, Sgt. Gatewood had said the aliens were at the bomb
range, not the base.
He decided that since it was almost dinner time, and
the sun would be down in an hour or two, he would find a
place to spend the night. Instead of looking near 'The
Strip,' he found a place on the northwest side of town. The
hotel was clean and comfortable, but didn't have the flash
and glitter of the downtown casinos. Of course, that's not
to say they didn't have gaming tables-- Las Vegas was so
proliferated with gambling devices that there were even slot
machines in the airport restrooms. If Brad did find any
aliens in Nevada, it was probably because they'd blown all
their vacation money at the crap table, and couldn't buy gas
for the saucer ride home.
After dinner (and a few games of keno) in the cafe,
Brad wandered back to his room, and pulled out the envelope
Jennings had given him. Inside were about a dozen
photocopies of articles from the Los Angeles Herald with
handwritten notes stating edition and page number. Brad
noticed Jennings had written on several of the photocopies
with red ink to help guide him through his research. On the
top of the stack was letter written on notebook paper.
"When we talked this afternoon," started the letter, "I
got the impression that you were looking for evidence that
the Air Force had dead aliens. I've geared this research
toward that line of thinking and provided you with several
pertinent articles. They're in a particular order, so read
them front to back. If you read them out of order, they
might not make sense."
Brad found it interesting that Jennings had thought
that he was talking about dead aliens-- Gatewood had said
that they 'talked in your head,' implying that they were
alive. He stuffed the letter in the envelope, and turned
his attention to the first article. The piece had been run
on the front page, because a portion of the newspaper's
banner was displayed on the photocopy. It was dated July 9,
1947, as reported by the Associated Press. Brad read the
first paragraph, and almost fell off the bed he was lying
on.
The article recounted the events of the seventh, when
Army Air Force spokesman Second Lieutenant Warren Haught
reported that a rancher near Roswell, New Mexico, had found
debris from a crashed aircraft on his land, and towed it to
his barn with a tractor. Upon investigation by Army
personnel it was determined to be a "flying disk." The
object was immediately transported by truck to the airfield,
where it was loaded on a plane and flown to Wright Field in
Ohio. Army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Hoyt Vandenburg had no
explanation for the object, and was collecting his top
nuclear scientists for an investigation. During a refueling
stop in Texas, craft was identified as a weather balloon.
Upon reading the explanation, Brad let out a mock laugh
and shook his head. If one thing could be said for the U.S.
military, it was that they were consistent. Over forty
years ago, and they were already experts of the cover-up.
A weather balloon, indeed. It was absurd! Here was an
Army officer saying that they had recovered a flying disk,
and once they get it under wraps, they say that it was only
a weather balloon. Brad wasn't an expert on aircraft, and
certainly not on flying saucers, but he had enough faith in
human observation to realize that something was wrong here.
The Lieutenant had probably released the story when he
realized its significance, only to be silenced when the
military bureaucracy finally swung into motion.
Story number two was from page three of February 21,
1954. The headline read: "Ike Chips Crown; Presumed Dead."
Brad's eyes were immediately drawn to the middle of the
page, where Jennings had high-lighted the word "helicopter."
He had also written a note across the top explaining that
his flying saucer friend, Don Ralston, had shown him this
article.
It was a rather whimsical story of how President
Eisenhower had disappeared from his vacation home in Palm
Springs for several hours the night before. When the press
corps noticed that the President had slipped out, they leapt
into action and churned out a dozen possible scenarios for
his disappearance. United Press International reported that
Eisenhower was dead of a heart attack, an east coast
reporter said he saw the president's helicopter (high-
lighted) leave, but the rumors were all laid to rest when
the White House Press Secretary finally made a statement.
He explained that the President had chipped a crown on a
chicken bone at about eight o'clock, and had gone to the
dentist to have it repaired.
Though Brad could see that it was unusual that the
President would fly by helicopter to the dentist's office,
and that it was strange for him to go in the middle of the
night, he couldn't see what it had to do with flying
saucers. Without giving it any more thought, he slipped the
paper into the envelope with the others.
Next was another front page story dated December 16, of
the same year. According to the article, at a press
conference where he unveiled a plan to cut the active duty
military in favor of a better trained reserve, President
Eisenhower stated that the Air Force had assured him that
there was no need to fear invasion from outer space. He
went on to say, that the Air Force had sent out fifteen
hundred UFO sighting report forms and had explained ninety
per cent of them. They said the only reason they couldn't
explain the other ten per cent was because the observer had
not given them sufficient information.
Again, Brad snorted in disgust. What did the Air Force
want... a license plate number?
Then it occurred to him.
Why would the President say something like that? Why
would he say there was nothing to worry about? If one of
the reporters had asked him, why would he have bothered to
answer instead of laughing it off as a joke? And why did he
just happen to have those figures handy at the time?
Furthermore, how could the Air Force assure him that there
was no danger of alien invasion, unless they knew something
they weren't telling? The more he thought about the
article, the less he liked what it implied.
Page 11, July 23, 1978. This article told of a man who
claimed to have seen the dead bodies of aliens that were
killed in a crash in New Mexico in 1962. He charged the
government with covering up the incident, and keeping the
autopsy reports from two eastern hospitals a secret.
Another report followed about a UFO investigator who
claimed to have a signed affidavit from a doctor who
conducted an autopsy on one of the aliens. He further
charged the Air Force has bodies, and pieces of several
crashed flying saucers at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in
Ohio.
Brad dropped the stack of articles, and tore into the
envelope where he had deposited the ones he'd finished.
When he found the first article, he skimmed over it until he
found what he was looking for. According to the 1947
report, the then Army Air Force admitted sending the flying
disk to Wright Field, Ohio, which he surmised was most
likely the present day Wright-Patterson AFB. Of course,
Brad realized that if this guy was lying, and had read the
1947 article, he might have incorporated it in his
fabrication. On the other hand, Jennings' evidence seemed
to concur with the man's story.
From the Arts and Leisure section of one of 1980's
Sunday papers, Jennings had cut a book review. The book,
entitled The Roswell Incident, told the story of how the Air
Force had covered-up the existence of UFO's since 1947. It
also claimed that in 1954, President Eisenhower had flown to
Edwards Air Force Base to view several dead aliens and
crashed flying saucers when he was supposed to be at the
dentist.
As if he had been hit with a brick, it suddenly struck
him as to why Jennings had included the story of Ike's tooth
in the portfolio. Brad had been to Edwards to watch a Space
Shuttle landing, and he had visited Palm Springs. If
someone (like the President) had a helicopter, he could have
flown to Edwards had several hours to see the aliens, and
flown back, with plenty of time to have a good night's
sleep.
It would explain why the helicopter had disappeared.
It would also answer his question about why the President
couldn't wait until morning to have his tooth fixed. If he
were on vacation, he wouldn't have had any important
meetings, but if he had tried to sneak out in the daylight,
it would have been too easy for the press to follow him. On
top of that, if he had just visited the base, the reporters
would have wanted to go. Surely if the President asked a
dentist to lie for his country, the man would have agreed.
After all, he'd become known as "the dentist who worked on
the President."
The next articles were a collection of stories that
chronicled three separate cases. One case involved a
couple, Betty and Barney Hill, who had been abducted by the
crew of a flying saucer in 1961. The next was about an
Arizona man, Travis Walton, who was taken aboard a UFO and
held for five days. Last, was the case of Air Force Staff
Sergeant Moody, who was picked up near Alamengardo, New
Mexico.
Each of the cases was slightly different, but they all
shared similar characteristics. In each case the abducttees
described a creature three to four feet tall, with a
disproportionately large head and big eyes, just like the
one that Gatewood had seen. They also reported that the
aliens used telepathy as a mode of communication as opposed
to speech, which would explain Gatewood saying that they had
talked in his head. Also mentioned in all three cases, was
a form of temporary paralysis, and post-hypnotic amnesia
after the event.
When Brad was finished with the stack of articles, he
wasn't sure if he was mad or frustrated, but he did know
that he didn't like what he had read. On the one hand, he
had gone through life thinking that only crazy people saw
things like UFO's, monsters, and ghosts. On still another
hand, he had a witness, he had a stack of evidence from a
highly reputable source (his newspaper), and he had Major
Dandridge's attempted smokescreen.
The mere thought of Dandridge was enough to raise
Brad's blood pressure. The man had told him that he didn't
know Gatewood, yet he had worked with him on the Stealth
Project. He had also said that he wasn't a pilot and didn't
know anything about Stealth other than the basics, yet Mrs.
Gatewood said he'd flown Stealth fighters. Brad had already
caught the man in three lies, and he had only spoken to him
for ten minutes. The fact that Brad had lied first by using
Fletcher's name, never occured to him.
The more he thought about Gatewood's story, the worst
his dilemma seemed to become. Obviously, Mr. Wheeler was
right about the military only giving the press enough
information to lead them on a wild goose chase. Dandridge
had repeatedly lied about himself and his relationship with
Gatewood, but had given Brad Mrs. Gatewood's address. He
must have thought that she would further discredit her
husband.
Yet, as Brad thought about Mrs. Gatewood's story, he
couldn't help but think that it almost reinforced the
Sergeant's claims. Maybe Gatewood was crazy and making the
whole thing up, but if he was sane enough to have all his
details so perfectly in tune with the evidence Jennings had
given Brad, then he couldn't be as crazy as he seemed.
Furthermore only a crazy person would go to the lengths
Gatewood had simply to execute a hoax.
It was the venerable Catch-22. If Brad believed the
evidence he had, he was a fool. If the evidence was real
and he didn't believe, then he was passing up the story of
the century.
He tried desperately to drive the thoughts from his
head. There was nothing further he could do tonight. But
tomorrow... tomorrow was a whole new day.
And the first thing on the agenda was a trip to the
Nellis bomb range.
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