The gods who watch over the UFO project were smiling about this time, because one morning I got a call from a colonel on Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.  He was going to be in our area that morning and planned to stop in to see me.

He arrived in a few minutes and turned out to be none other than the colonel who had headed the group which had investigated UFO’s and radiation at the eastern laboratory.  He repeated his story.  It was the same as I had heard from the scientist, with a few insignificant changes.  The colonel had no records of his group’s operations, but knew who had them.  He promised to get a wire off to the person immediately, which he did.

The answer was a bit disappointing.  During the intervening months the data had been scattered out among the members of the colonel’s group, and when the group broke up, so did its collection of records.

So all we had to fall back on was the colonel’s word, but since he now was heading a top-priority project at Wright, it would be difficult not to believe him.

After obtaining the colonel’s story, we collected all available data concerning known incidents in which there seemed to be a correlation between the visual sighting of UFO’s and the presence of excess atomic radiation in the area of the sightings.

There was one last thing to do.  I wanted to take the dates and times of all the reported radiation increases and check them against all sources of UFO reports.  This project would take a lot of leg work and digging, but I felt that it would offer the most positive and complete evidence we could assemble as to whether or not a correlation existed.

Accordingly, we dug into our files, ADC radar logs, press wire service files, newspaper morgues in the sighting area, and the files of individuals who collect data on saucers.  Whenever we found a visual report that correlated with a radiation peak we checked it against weather conditions, balloon tracks, astronomical reports, etc.

As soon as the data had all been assembled, I arranged for a group of Air Force consultants to look it over.  I got the same old answer—­ the data still aren’t good enough.  The men were very much interested in the reports, but when it came time to putting their comments on paper they said, “Not enough conclusive evidence.”  If in some way the UFO’s could have been photographed at the same time that the radiation detectors were going wild, it would have been a different story, they later told me, but with the data I had for them this was the only answer they could give.  No one could explain the sudden bursts of radiation, but there was no proof that they were associated with UFO’s.

The board’s ruling wrote finish to this investigation.  I informed the colonel, and he didn’t like the decision.  Later I passed through the city where the scientist was working.  I stopped over a few hours to brief him on the board’s decision.  He shook his head in disbelief.