It was just about a year after J.Allen Hynek had passed away and I was serving as the Director of Special Investigations for his namesake, the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in Chicago, Illinois. I also served on the board of directors at that time. It was seven years since the book The Roswell Incident had sparked a fair degree of interest on the American UFO scene and I, for one, was not impressed. In fact, I would not even acquire a copy of the book for another year. Nonetheless, many throughout the UFO community were taking the case seriously. The very notion that the U.S. government had in their possession the actual remains of a crashed flying saucer was within the scope of possibilities for many of my colleagues. The problem for me was that I just could not conceive that an event of such magnitude could be kept a secret for all those years. As a result, I was very dismissive of such a fairytale. Little did I know that my entire life was about to be completely engrossed by the very subject.
Come February of that time in 1987, I received a phone call from my good friend and fellow CUFOS board member, Jerome Clark. ‘Jerry’ was cautiously excited about a fast developing situation within our field of ufology. So fast, that he immediately asked me to strictly take his word, due to the fact he had yet to see that for which he was about to describe to me. “Don!” exclaimed Jerry. “We may be on to a smoking gun situation here. Now, I’ve talked to Mark (Dr. Mark Rodeghier, successor to Hynek) and he agrees with me that we should go ahead with this. We’d like you to contact Paul Harvey and see if he’ll break the story of what I’m about to confide to you.” The late Paul Harvey was a famous radio news commentator with ABC network out of Chicago for over fifty years. After Hynek had passed away, I was selected by the CUFOS board to continue briefing this highly influential newsman on the subject of UFOs. “Tell me what you have,” I asked Clark. He replied, “If this is genuine, it will break the entire UFO field wide open…”
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