Yet once this narrative decision was made, it created a second problem. Would the tale become too subjective? Would it, stripped of the anonymous yet authoritative perspective of the familiar journalistic third person, read simply as one reporter's version of what happened? Or, worse, would the account seem too novelistic? Would readers understand that seemingly casual details - the shopping spree that delayed Commander Mondran (Chapter One), the Michelob key ring dangling from Bill Moore's jeans (Chapter Thirty-two), or even the greasy french fry waved threateningly across a table at a young scientist (Chapter Thirteen) - were rock - solid facts excavated from mountains of research and observation and not simply an unscrupulous author's easy inventions?
Also, now is the time to admit there was another ambition shaping and complicating my telling of this story. The book attempts to show how the people‹scientists, generals, farmers‹who populate its pages think: how they construe the world and infuse their lives with meaning. And to accomplish this, the book's style and structure were influenced by the narrative pace of popular science fiction‹as were the real-life actions and beliefs of many of its heroes, both thinkers and dreamers.
Yet, this is a true story.
The reader, however, has a right to know what is meant by "true." The reader has a right to know if any liberties were taken in the pursuit of style, in the dramatized telling of the tale.
Here, then, are the standards I adhered to in writing the book. It is based largely on interviews. Over the nearly three years I spent chasing after the story, I interviewed 212 individuals. There were lengthy conversations, such as the one with Professor Paul Horowitz at Harvard that continued throughout two fascinating days; there were interviews that were conducted over a number of months, such as those with Mayor Larry Feiler of Elmwood, with whom I had three phone conversations in addition to spending an informative afternoon in his office; and there were numerous brief but helpful telephone interviews, such as my frequent calls to the press officers of the U.S. Space Command ("Box Nine is on what floor, please?"). Also, I have had no choice but to make use of sources who requested - often demanded - anonymity. This is, I will agree, one of the crutches of journalism and part of what separates the genre from the more rigidly standardized discipline of history. Yet, a reporter's covenant is to protect the privacy and livelihoods of those who have, often at some personal risk, befriended him with information. And his obligation is to tell his story while it is still fresh, while it is still news. That was my dilemma, and the book is a product of the choices I made.
Still, in using the material gathered in these interviews I have followed strict rules. If dialogue is quoted directly, the source is either the individual who is speaking, or someone who witnessed the conversation. And often I felt free to use the absolute authority of direct quotations because I had a variety of concurring sources - the speaker and two or more eyewitnesses. Other times, however, when my sources disagreed about what was said or could not recall the conversation precisely, my method was more judgmental. I tried to keep as close as possible to the general way my informants remembered events, and ultimately I favored reconstructions that in my opinion made the most sense. Direct quotation marks were never used in these situations. And when individuals disagreed over important points - for example, General Stubblebine's memory of any role he might have played with the 1983 UFO taskforce - I felt dutybound to include both sides of these arguments.
Another important source of information was found in the tall piles of newspaper articles, magazine pieces, and government publications (both scientific documents and military "backgrounders") that I assembled in my years of research. These written sources were used to substantiate information collected in interviews (for example: Phil Klass's exhaustive articles in The Skeptical Inquirer; Stanton Friedman's privately published essays on "the cosmic Watergate," as well as those he published in International UFO Reporter on the MJ-12 evidence and "the secret life" of Donald Menzel; and monographs by Russell Targ and Dr. Harold Puthoff on Remote Vision). They also provided additional details as I fleshed out scenes (for example: privately published pamphlets on the history of Elmwood, Wisconsin; U.S. Navy "fact sheets'' on the "electronic fence" detection system) and were essential to an understanding of the fundamentals of the science that has convinced NASA there is other life in the universe‹and a "rational'' way to search for it (Part III, The Order of the Dolphin).
My library of scientific source material grew to more than 200 books and articles, and it was an enjoyable education. If any reader is interested in taking a similar course, I would suggest he could not fail to be intrigued if his preliminary reading list included Walter Sullivan's We Are Not Alone (Signet Books), John Kraus's Big Ear (Cygnus-Quasar Books), NASA's SETI (government publication no. SP-419), and Life in the Universe, edited by John Billingham (NASA Conference Publication 2156). These books were supplemented by the several volumes of the now unfortunately defunct magazine Cosmic Search, which contained wonderfully candid reminiscences by Professors Frank Drake and Phillip Morrison that helped to shape my reporting in Part III.
Also, the description of Carl Sagan's confrontation with Senator Proxmire in Part III came largely from a speech the astronomer made in 1985 to the International Astronomical Union, as reported by Thomas R. McDonough in his witty The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1987).
Additionally, it should be noted that Tom Weber's interrogator in Chapter Twenty-three was Marcia Nelesen of the Janesville Sunday Gazette, where that interview, in slightly different form, first appeared. Similarly, while many of Bill Moore's comments and observations (Part V, Counterinteiligence) were made in the course of interviews with me, another important source for directly quoted information was the transcript of a long presentation he made to a UFO conference in Las Vegas in July 1989 (available through William L. Moore Publications). Also, as I made my way through government archives armed with the Freedom of Information Act, I relied greatly on the pioneering research done by Lawrence Fawcett and Barry J. Greenwood for their book Clear Intent (Prentice Hall). And, as I indicate in the text, I also was able to review and quote from government documents that still remain classified.
Above all, I have done my best throughout the pages of this book to include the dates when events occurred, the names of the specific individuals who played a role m the story, and to make my source attributions immediately apparent. If, at times, I have found it necessary to protect the identity of an individual, it was a compromise I have openly shared with the reader. It was the only way secrets could be revealed, and a true story told.
10/09/96