Larry W. Bryant’s UFOview

TO: Ms. Delores M. Nelson
     Information and Privacy Coordinator
     U. S. Central Intelligence Agency
     Washington, DC 20505

 FROM: Larry W. Bryant
      3518 Martha Custis Drive
      Alexandria, VA 22302

 DATE: March 1, 2009

 1. On February 3, 2009, a surrogate UFO-E.T.-coverup whistleblower named "Bob" phoned in to the late-night syndicated radio program Coast-to-Coast AM (hosted by George Noory). "Bob related the circumstances of his acquisition of certain 16-mm film footage showing President Eisenhower and the late aviation pioneer Howard Hughes inspecting the apparent remains of a crash-landed flying saucer and its alien crew. (See my below-quoted transcript of "Bob's" account.) This latest evidence implicating Eisenhower in the federal government's sequestering of hard evidence of UFO-E.T. reality dovetails with earlier leakage to certain UFOlogists of a copy of the so-called Eisenhower Briefing Document from the allegedly CIA-created/managed "Majestic-12" operation that began during the late 1940s.

 2. In order to unearth the whole story of Eisenhower's UFO-E.T. connection, I submit this letter as a freedom-of-information request that you send me a copy of all CIA-generated and CIA-received records pertaining to the film footage revealed by "Bob's" account. One or more copies of that footage (and/or references thereto) may be housed in the same compartment as that which contains the radar data and other technical material that certain CIA personnel confiscated from former FAA official John J. Callahan during his investigation of the UFO encounter experienced by a Japanese 747 cargo jet over Alaska on Nov. 17, 1986. (Refer to my FOIA-CIA case No. F-2008-01781, which soon will be litigated in U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia.) I therefore ask that your ensuing records search include that special compartment.

 3. Please note that the U. S Freedom of Information Act (as amended by the U. S. OPEN Government Act of 2007) requires your agency to conduct a reasonable search for the sought-for records - and that I, as a representative of the news media (RNM), remain entitled to full waiver of all records-processing fees incident to your fulfillment of this request. As with my most recent FOIA requests to your agency, I refer you to my web log - http://ufoview.posterous.com - for ample evidence of my RNM requester status. Note: I shall construe your acceptance of this request as a formal acknowledgment of my RNM requester status.

 4. By snail-mail, I'm sending to you a signed printout of this e-formatted letter.

  
LARRY W. BRYANT
Columnist for UFO Magazine

 Copies furnished to:
  Editor, UFO Magazine
  Jonathan L. Katz, Esq.
  Chair, Select Committee on Intelligence, U. S. Senate
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

   == TEXT OF C2C CALLER "BOB'S" ACCOUNT ON 3 FEB 09 ==

 [LWB Note: at the last minute of the guest segment's final hour, wherein guest Whitley Strieber and host Noory fielded listeners' calls, a man named "Bob" (from east of the Rockies) gives this account.]

 Hello, Mr. Noory. I have a unique -- unique-- situation to volunteer. I'm in the military, and I monitor satellite cameras. What I've got to tell you is based on UFOs -- uh, very unique situation: I have acquired eighteen canisters -- reel-to-reel film, military film, based in the forties, early fifties. Uh, I inherited it.

 [Noory: 16-mil, black-and-white?] They're black-and-white; I had a [garbled] on the majority of them. The cans show military insignia like eagles and stuff like that.

 [Noory: Have you looked at the film yet, Bob?] I have looked at a few of them. Uh, what I've seen so far scares me to death.

 [Noory: of what? -- give us a quick glimpse.] Uh, we gonna have to talk off the air at some point in time; it's not . . .. [Noory, interrupting: I'm gonna have you give Tom your phone number if that's okay.] What I've seen so far on the ones that I've looked at -- well, back to the first one that I looked at showed President Eisenhower and, uh, the, uh, that eccentric guy, he, uh, that had the airplanes -- what was his name? -- the one who went into seclusion.

 [Strieber: Oh, Howard Hughes.] Howard Hughes in a warehouse, looking around and, uh, people laying on stretchers (and they weren't from this earth). [Noory: Oh, my gosh; all right, look . . ..] I want to stop there and . . .. [Noory, interrupting: Bob, I'm putting you on hold, we're gonna get your phone number and we will talk at length. Could be fascinating. Whitley, my friend, stay in touch. [Strieber: thank you very much, George, as always . . ..]

[LWB note: In a near-historically timely response to my 19 Feb 09 FOIA request (posted as Item 2.20 of this blog - http://ufoview.posterous.com ), a staffer at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kan., has sent me a snail-mail reply dated Feb. 20, 2009. Though he - Tim Rives - apparently has done no actual records search for the alleged UFO-E.T. film footage in question, he nevertheless declares that the library contains no such material. I'm quoting his reply, below. Meantime, his denial raises some key points, e.g.:
(1) Either he's been misinformed or is lying about the whereabouts of the film's original negative, or he's keeping the door open on whether the (inherited) copy now in the hands of a fellow named "Bob" may indeed be the original version.
(2) Here's a professional librarian we'd expect to have some excitement over a citizen's possible discovery of a monumental slice of presidential history, and he refrains from even suggesting how his institution (or some other one) might facilitate the forensic vetting of that specimen.
(3) How many times during his librarianship has Rives encountered such a claimed discovery only to end up so jaded as to greet with an arbitrary shoulder-shrug any public inquiry about it? His reaction to the claim has all the irony of the ending of the movie "Raiders of the Lost Arc," whereby the original negative of the Ike UFO-E.T. film reposes on some obscure, dusty basement shelf amidst dozens of canisters labeled, say, "Army Recruitment Training Films of the 1950s Era."]
 
  == TEXT OF MR. RIVES'S 20 FEB 09 LETTER TO L.W.B ==
 
Dear Mr. Bryant:
 
This letter is in response to your Freedom of Information Act request, which we received in this office on February 20, 2009.
 
I am sorry, but we do not hold motion pictures, still photographs, or records of any kind documenting President Eisenhower's alleged inspection of alien bodies or UFOs.
 
You also inquired whether we would accept such a record should it be offered to us. The short answer is yes, provided it conforms to the criteria outlined in our acquisitions policy below:
 
Historical materials sought will be those documenting the private and public lives of General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as the historical events and governmental policies which shaped the mid-Twentieth Century and on which he exercised considerable influence.
 
* Materials must have substantial historical value.
* The creator, either individual or corporate, must have had a direct - or if indirect, significant - relationship with, or impact on, the life and/or political and governmental activities of General and President Eisenhower, or the larger social, cultural, political, and economic environments that shaped Eisenhower's private life and public service. Papers and associated historical materials will be solicited from:
 
** The President and the President's family.
** Close personal friends of the President and Mrs. Eisenhower.
** White House staff holding political and policy positions as well as White House career administrative staff whose functions included significant, regular contact with the First Family.
** Executive Office of the President officials who held political and policy-related positions.
** Executive Department Secretaries, Under-, Assistant-, and Deputy-Secretaries. The papers of non-political (career) officials who held solely operational and administrative responsibilities will be solicited only in special circumstances.
** Historical materials of or relating to governmental or nongovernmental organizations with which Dwight D. Eisenhower was associated.
** Collectors of historical memorabilia, particularly those holding presidential and political items relevant to the Museum's exhibit programming.
 
Again, we would welcome the donation of any substantial historical material fitting the criteria defined as above. Please note, however, that as a federal agency we are prohibited by law from buying material. It must be given to us.
 
Please let me know if I can be of further assistance.
 
Sincerely,
 
TIM RIVES
Supervisory & Solicitation Archivist
Eisenhower Presidential Library & Museum

TO: Ms. Delores M. Nelson
    Information and Privacy Coordinator
    U. S. Central Intelligence Agency
    Washington, DC 20505
 
FROM: Larry W. Bryant
     3518 Martha Custis Drive
     Alexandria, VA 22302
 
DATE: February 22, 2009
 
1. In accordance with (a) presidential Executive Order 12958 and with (b) the U. S. Freedom of Information Act (as amended by the OPEN Government Act of 2007), this is a two-part request, separate-but-related as to subject matter.
 
2. For part one, please subject to mandatory/automatic declassification all of the CIA-generated/housed 57 UFO-related documents that surfaced during the 1978 FOIA lawsuit of Ground Saucer Watch v. Central Intelligence Agency. These documents meet the age threshold (25-plus years) for MDR processing as permanent records of untold historic value. I ask that you keep me promptly and regularly informed of the results of that processing, starting by your assigning a case number to the request.
 
2. The second part of this request seeks your prompt FOIA release of any and all currently segregable portions of the 57 documents from their classified portions. Please promptly report to me the results of your segregable-portion-releasability review under a case number separate from the number you'll be assigning to the above-requested MDR case.
 
3. Since I submit these requests as a representative of the news media (as evidenced by my publication credits cited in my web log - http://ufoview.posterous.com ), I expect you to acknowledge that requester status by waiving all records-processing fees incident to your fulfilling them.
 
4. By snail-mail, I'm sending to you a signed printout of this e-formatted letter.
 
 
LARRY W. BRYANT
Columnist for UFO Magazine
 
Copies furnished to:
  Editor, UFO Magazine
  Chair, Select Committee on Intelligence, U. S. Senate
  Peter A. Gersten, Esq.

LWB Note: Although Project Cherry - a rogue operation that fielded CIA-managed assassination teams in certain areas of Southeast Asia during the Vietnam-war era - has nothing to do with the UFO cover-up, its existence does reflect how a U. S. agency easily can abuse its authority and lose its constitutional moorings in the absence of sustained public oversight. Why should such an agency be entrusted with managing the official U. S. embargo on UFOtruth - especially when you consider that, according to certain State Department records, the National Security Council treasonously disregarded certain presidential directives against continuing such activity as Project Cherry?]
 
TO: Director
  U. S. Central Intelligence Agency
  Washington, DC 20505
 
FROM: Larry W. Bryant
  3518 Martha Custis Drive
  Alexandria, VA 22302
 
DATE: January 29, 2009
 
My April 2, 2008, letter to your agency FOIA coordinator, Subject: Request for CIA Action, includes the following excerpt, requesting --
 
  "2c. Prompt submission of all 'Project Cherry'-related records to the
  declassification-review process mandated by applicable presidential
  executive orders, along with your promptly notifying me once your
  agency completes that review."
 
Since I have received no response to that request for declassification, I hereby reiterate it here. In addition, I submit this letter (a signed copy of which is being snail-mailed to you) as a formal, written FOIA request that you send me a copy of all CIA records generated as a result of your agency's receipt of the above-cited excerpt.
 
Please note that this FOIA request is being submitted in my capacity as a representative of the news media (RNM), a requester status automatically entitling me to full waiver of all records-search/review fees incident to your fulfilling this request.
 
Should you ignore or otherwise deny my RNM requester status, I shall pursue all necessary remedial action, including judicial review. For direct evidence of my RNM requester status and of its related publication credits, I refer you to my web log, as follows: http://ufoview.posterous.com .
 
 
LARRY W. BRYANT
Independent Writer (specializing in national-security affairs)
 
Copies furnished to:
 
  Jonathan L. Katz, Esq.
 
  John McCarthy (a fall-guy victim of Project Cherry -- as per his web site at http://johnmccarthy90066.tripod.com/id38.html )

TO: Director
     ATTN: Freedom-of-Information Manager
     U. S. Federal Bureau of Investigation
     170 Marcel Drive
     Winchester, VA 22602-4843
 
FROM: Larry W. Bryant
      3518 Martha Custis Drive
      Alexandria, VA 22302
 
DATE: February 20, 2009
 
Under terms of the U. S. Freedom of Information Act (as amended by the OPEN Government Act of 2007), I hereby request that you furnish me a copy of any and all FBI-generated and FBI-received records pertaining to the activities, associations, and motivations of the late UFO researcher Robert H. Bletchman, former Avon, Conn.-based director of public relations for the public-interest organization called Mutual UFO Network, Inc. Bletchman's UFOlogical career included offering consultative service to the public-interest group Citizens Against UFO Secrecy, which is partly based at my home in Alexandria, Va.
 
Please see the enclosed copy of his obituary from the Hartford, Conn., Courant of Dec. 7, 2008, as reprinted by the January 2009 issue of the MUFON UFO Journal.
 
I hereby construe your acceptance of this request as your formal acknowledgment of my previously demonstrated "requester status" as a representative of the news media (RNM), thus entitling me to full waiver of all agency records-processing fees incident to your fulfilling this request. As with most of my other recently submitted FOIA requests, I hereby cite pertinent contents of my web log - http://ufoview.posterous.com - as evidence of my RNM status.
 
By snail-mail, I'm sending to you a signed printout of this e-formatted letter.
 
 
LARRY W. BRYANT
Columnist for UFO Magazine
 
Copies furnished to:
 
  Editor, UFO Magazine
 
  Chair, Select Committee on Intelligence, U. S. Senate
 
  Lewis Kannon

TO:  Director

         ATTN:  Freedom-of-Information Manager

         Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library

         200 S. E. 4th Street

         Abilene, KS  67410

FROM:  Larry W. Bryant

             3518 Martha Custis Drive

             Alexandria, VA  22302

DATE:  February 19, 2009

On February 3, 2009, a de facto UFO-E.T-coverup whistleblower 

surfaced during the live broadcast of the nationally syndicated radio 

show "Coast-to-Coast AM" (hosted by George Noory).  Please see my 

following transcript of that show's segment in which caller "Bob" 

reveals his acquisition of certain 1940s--1950s-era film footage 

showing Pres. Eisenhower observing, inside a warehouse, certain 

artifacts from an apparent UFO-crash-retrieval operation -- to 

include alien bodies on stretchers.

Accordingly, assuming that "Bob's" collection of film constitutes a 

copy made from the original version, I hereby request, under terms of 

the U. S. Freedom of Information Act (as amended by the OPEN 

Government Act of 2007), that you provide me a copy of any and all 

NARA-maintained original film clips showing the Eisenhower presence 

in the scene "Bob" describes in his account.

NOTE:  If your ensuing records search determines that your library 

contains no such film footage, I ask that you forward this letter to 

the library official authorized to acquire a copy of such historic 

footage for the library's own collection.  If that official declines 

to accept such an acquisition opportunity, please ask him/her to 

provide me an explanation for that non-acceptance.

Since I submit this request as a representative of the news media (as 

evidenced by my publication credits cited in my web log -- 

http://ufoview.posterous.com ), I ask that you waive all 

records-processing fees incident to your fulfillment of this request.

By snail-mail, I'm sending to you a signed printout of this e-formatted letter.

LARRY W. BRYANT

Columnist for UFO Magazine

Copies furnished to:

   Editor, UFO Magazine

   George Noory

   Chair, Select Committee on Intelligence, U. S. Senate

   Lewis Kannon

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

      == TEXT OF C2C CALLER "BOB'S" ACCOUNT ON 3 FEB 09 ==

[LWB Note:  at the last minute of the guest segment's final hour, 

wherein guest Whitley Strieber and host Noory fielded listeners' 

calls, a man named "Bob" (from east of the Rockies) gives this 

account.]

Hello, Mr. Noory.  I have a unique -- unique-- situation to 

volunteer.  I'm in the military, and I monitor satellite cameras. 

What I've got to tell you is based on UFOs -- uh, very unique 

situation:  I have acquired eighteen canisters -- reel-to-reel film, 

military film, based in the forties, early fifties.  Uh, I inherited 

it.

[Noory:  16-mil, black-and-white?]  They're black-and-white; I had a 

[garbled] on the majority of them.  The cans show military insignia 

like eagles and stuff like that.

[Noory:  Have you looked at the film yet, Bob?]  I have looked at a 

few of them.  Uh, what I've seen so far scares me to death.

[Noory:  of what? -- give us a quick glimpse.]  Uh, we gonna have to 

talk off the air at some point in time; it's not . . .. [Noory, 

interrupting:  I'm gonna have you give Tom your phone number if 

that's okay.]  What I've seen so far on the ones that I've looked at 

-- well, back to the first one that I looked at showed President 

Eisenhower and, uh, the, uh, that eccentric guy, he, uh, 

that had the airplanes -- what was his name? -- the one who went into 

seclusion.

[Strieber:  Oh, Howard Hughes.]  Howard Hughes in a warehouse, 

looking around and, uh, people laying on stretchers (and they weren't 

from this earth).  [Noory:  Oh, my gosh; all right, look . . ..] I 

want to stop there and . . ..  [Noory, interrupting:  Bob, I'm 

putting you on hold, we're gonna get your phone number and we will 

talk at length.  Could be fascinating.  Whitley, my friend, stay in 

touch.  [Strieber:  thank you very much, George, as always . . ..]

TO: Freedom of Information Manager
U. S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Washington, DC 20546

FROM: Larry W. Bryant
3518 Martha Custis Drive
Alexandria, VA 22302

DATE: February 13, 2009

Near the end of his 2008 memoir ("Proof of Extraterrestrial Intelligence: The Cape Canaveral Apollo Program Chronicles" -- published by lulu.com ), Floridian JE Oglesby recounts how, during the evening of Sunday, September 15, 1968, he and two other men encountered a landed alien spacecraft at the shoreline of Lake Pickett (near the town of Bithlo), several miles west of the NASA Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

Part of that encounter included the three witnesses' noticing a rendezvous between the E. T. craft and an official-looking, dark-colored sedan presumed to contain U. S. government personnel.

Accordingly, under terms of the U. S. Freedom of Information Act, I hereby request that you furnish me a copy of all NASA-generated and NASA-received records pertaining to the September 15, 1968, incident and to any and all previous and subsequent such official government liaison with extraterrestrial entities -- said records to include correspondence, minutes of meetings, memoranda of understanding, temporary-duty orders, intelligence estimates, briefing papers (Vu-graphs/charts/photographic prints, etc.), technical data re the aliens' communication devices/protocol, memoranda for record, electronic recordings of all alien-Earthling communications, memoranda of telephone conversations, radar-tracking data re the E.T. craft's monitoring of the Apollo program's activity, staff studies, after-action reports, and transcripts of all alien-emissary interviews.

Pursuant to the U. S. OPEN Records Act of 2007, I expect you to acknowledge my FOIA requester status as a "representative of the news media" -- a status entitling me to full waiver of your agency's records-processing fees incident to your fulfilling this request. For examples of my various publication credits in this regard, I refer you to my internet web log at UFOView.

By snail-mail, I'm sending to you a signed printout of this e-formatted letter.

LARRY W. BRYANT
Columnist for UFO Magazine

Copies furnished to:
Editor, UFO Magazine
Jonathan L. Katz, Esq.
Chair, Select Committee on Intelligence, U. S. Senate

When, on Feb. 7, 2003, I submitted my FOIA request to the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency for access to "the entire CIA case file on 'Wendy Lee's' submission of her draft memoirs for prepublication approval," the thought never crossed my mind that the FOIA coordinator would take as long as six years to process my request. (No wonder the Agency received the National Security Archive's 2006 Rosemary Award for FOIA laxity/non-responsiveness! -- see: http://tinyurl.com/bzyjul .)
 
In a letter to me of Jan. 28, 2009, current CIA FOIAmeister Delores M. Nelson invokes six of the Act's "(b)" exemptions to deny me access to most of the sought-for case file. What she did deign to provide was a copy of two legal documents filed within the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia under case No. 1:03-cv-00206-TPJ: (1) the Feb. 3, 2003, First Amendment complaint of Wendy Lee v. Central Intelligence Agency (from the hand of Mark S. Zaid, Esq.); and (2) the July 7, 2004, memorandum and order granting summary judgment to the Agency (under the hand of Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson). Basically, the pseudonymous Wendy Lee lost her case because the Agency, in the court's view, has carte-blanche authority to "classify" anything it chooses. What's more: Lee, by having signed a preemployment secrecy agreement, had forfeited her First Amendment right to publish anything relating to her CIA (undercover) affiliation without prior Agency review/approval. Thus, her claim of official prior-restraint censorship failed to persuade Judge Jackson that the Agency had acted arbitrarily and capriciously in denying her permission to publish.
 
I summarize this case here to point out an apparent breakthrough in the Agency's almost impenetrable stone wall of recalcitrance as regards its obligation to process citizens' FOIA requests in a competent and good-faith manner. Can we attribute this turnaround to the fully activated, FOIA-strengthening U. S. OPEN Records Act of 2007? Let's hope so. And let's hope that there'll be fewer FOIA lawsuits, too -- so that some of the saved federal funds can be applied to beefing up the various agencies' FOIA staffs. -- Larry W. Bryant (independent writer specializing in national-security affairs -- http://ufoview.posterous.com )
 
== ". . . [CIA-deleted] in their telephone conversation, suggested that we had not heard the last from Mr. Bryant." -- from an Aug. 14, 1973, CIA memorandum pertaining to the Agency's clandestine courting of the UFOlogical favors of UFO researcher Richard H. Hall ( http://www.hallrichard.com/newufopage.htm ). See the May 17, 1990, FOIA lawsuit of Larry W. Bryant v. CIA (Civil Action No. 90-1163; USDC for the D. C.), which unsuccessfully sought access to the redacted portions of the 1973 memo. ==

(Originally published in the July 2007 issue of "UFO Magazine.")
 
By Larry W. Bryant
 
  Exactly 47 years and seven months after his role as a dual witness in one of the most compelling UFO encounters in recorded history, Lester Harold Moore, Jr., of the Hampton Roads bay-area city of Poquoson, Virginia, has stepped forward to help put his story on the public record -- from the citizen's standpoint, not from the federal bureaucrat's.
 
  Besides observing his 62nd birthday June 8, 2007, the native Poquosonite will be contemplating, once again, how he and a fellow neighborhood teenager, Mark Muza, had tempted fate during the twilight hours of Oct. 19, 1959, when they ventured out upon the restricted territory of an old USAF bombing range near Langley Air Force Base.
 
  They brought with them their shotguns and their zeal for bagging some water fowl.
 
  Separated by about 100 yards from his hunting companion, 15-year-old Muza (the older of the two by one year) came to a sudden halt in the marshland about a mile north of his Ridge Road home as he heard a whirring sound above his head. "Like a flock of wild birds," as he described the sound to a Newport News Daily Press reporter summoned to the area by Muza's mother. Almost frozen with fear, Mark chose to greet the small, unannounced, self-illumined saucer-shaped craft not with a wave of his hand but with a blast from his 12-gauge shotgun. As the craft kept descending from the estimated height of 80 feet, Muza fired another round; then, reloading with a solid-slug shell, he delivered the third and final blast before the interloper decided it had had enough of the Muza brand of hospitality, spinning away toward the southeast. During my interview with him a few days later, he told me that he'd distinctly heard his third shot ricochet as if it had hit a metallic object.
 
  After I had Muza fill out a simple sighting-report form for forwarding to the now-defunct, Washington, D.C.-based National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, I stopped by Harold Moore's home to seek HIS account. But his mother was skittish about my interviewing him, so I let the matter drop for then. (Note: mid-fifties-era residents of Poquoson tended to be xenophobic, so I was expecting at least a modicum of such hostility.)
 
  A year after the event, I produced a mimeographed monograph about this, my very first field investigation (at age 21). In it, I decried the lack of an official USAF Project Blue Book probe into the case. In the course of pushing for a formal investigation into this "shot UNheard 'round the world," I sought, with the help of a teen-aged UFOlogist in Norfolk, the intervention of U. S. Rep. Porter Hardy, Jr. But USAF authorities at both Langley and the Pentagon had chosen to stonewall both me and Hardy, averring that it would be contrary to AF policy to mount a UFO investigation on the basis of hearsay evidence. Had any of them been firemen alerted to a house fire by an anonymous passerby, would they have exhibited the same reluctance to become involved?
 
  Eleven years later, a newsletter called UFO Commentary (published by then-teenager Patrick Huyghe of Newport News) carried my retrospective essay about what was becoming a classic case in the annals of UFO research. Then, for his column of Dec. 28, 1983, a reporter at the Norfolk Ledger-Star interviewed Muza (who then was serving on the Newport News police force). The resulting story noted that Muza recalls the incident "as if it happened yesterday."
 
  Finally, upon discovering some official Poquoson-related records, I wrote another retrospective review,* posting it in one or two places on the Internet during January 2001. I'd wanted to contact Muza for an update interview but, alas, I ended up learning about his recent demise from cancer. In that essay, I also expressed perennial frustration over my inability to track down one Mr. Harold Moore, Jr. (assuming he still was alive). Not long afterwards, though (as if harnessing the theorized "six degrees of separation"), a Hampton resident contacted me with a key datum: Moore's first name was not Harold but Lester. What's more, this Lester fellow used to attend high school with a friend of the Hamptonian's. Bingo! I now had a full name, street address, and phone number, thus rounding out all the leads I'd need to resume my search. Unfortunately, with two unreturned phone calls later, I still had yet to make contact.
 
  I particularly had wanted to inform Moore of my recent acquisition of certain Blue Book files on his case, particularly as regards the two Langley AFB-dispatched investigators' interview conclusion (in May 1960) as to the (perceived) veracity of Muza and Moore. (By the way, those interviews had evolved from my persistence in pressing the case with Rep. Hardy and with the House Committee on Science and Astronautics.)
 
  Months passed by as the missing-link contact simmered on the back burner of intellectual neglect. Will I let still another missed opportunity rule the day -- or will I knuckle down and focus my energy one more time on this far-too-long diverted quest?
 
  The answer arrived on May 19, 2007. On a trip from my home in Alexandria to my daughter's home in Hampton (which lies within 10 miles of Poquoson), I vowed to mount an ambush of Mr. Moore. With daughter Gretchen at my side, we drove over to this home in Poquoson. We learned from his brother-in-law that Harold was out on a crabbing mission, due to return in a few hours to the seafood market where he and his wife labored for their owner-son. (Turns out that Gretchen happens to be an occasional customer of the place.) Thus, the denouement for this protracted drama was just a short while away. We decided to visit a nearby thrift store, eventually stopping by the market. Moore's wife told us that he was expected to return there shortly, so we left for a late lunch, returning at four o-clock.
 
  Upon entering the store this time, we noticed a balding, smiling man of about 265 pounds sitting next to Mrs. Moore. Yes, it was he -- the unwittingly elusive Harold, now seemingly eager to sort out the identity and purpose of this mysterious couple from afar.
 
  I began by telling him that I'd met him when he was fourteen; that I also had interviewed Mark Muza back on that otherwise routine day etched in Mark's memory. I beamed triumphantly as Harold rolled out the welcome carpet, offering me a seat in an interlocking easy chair next to his in the store's foyer. We talked for about 20 minutes -- a spell broken only a few times as he rose to attend to some arriving customers' needs.
 
  Like Muza, Harold said that he remembers the event as if it occurred yesterday: "I even recall that it took place on a week day." He added that he and Muza had remained friends throughout adulthood. Curiously, though, they never had bothered to discuss among themselves any details or after-effects of their "flying saucer" sighting. This silence may be due to their desire to avoid further ridicule from any of the townspeople of that era.
 
  I lost no time in posing the burning question: "The Air Force's report on this case, now preserved at the U. S. National Archives and Records Administration, concludes that the case probably was a hoax. Do you agree with that assessment?" Harold, taking only a couple of seconds to respond, gave me the answer I'd expected to hear: "It was no hoax." I proceeded to explain to him that the Blue Book report had turned upside down the rationale for rejecting the two boys' accounts: "The two investigators said they couldn't accept your veracity, Harold, because the details of your accounts coincided too much." Usually, as in police investigations, if a given witness's testimony DIFFERS substantially from another's, that's a valid reason to suspect some chicanery; but not if there's substantial AGREEMENT between the two testimonies. Go figure.
 
  At this point, Harold had a question for ME: "Do you know that, around the next day [October 20th], a sighting occurred near Hampton High School?" I answered "no," wondering if the Daily Press had been notified of that case as well.
 
  Shortly before concluding our discussion, Moore dropped a bombshell (almost disguised as a passing reference): he noted that, back in October 1959, NOT in May 1960, a Langley-based investigator had accompanied the two boys on a return visit to the area of the "crime." The investigator, noting the contoured wind/weight effect upon a patch of swamp grass, declared: "Yep. Somethin's set down here." Of course, the Blue Book report contains no such admission, so the question remains: who's doing the lying here: the Muza-Moore team or the USAF team of so-called objective investigators of UFO reports from the citizenry?
 
  Given our knowledge of how readily and easily various government agencies/officials can (and do) conspire to deceive the public, how can anyone be surprised to learn that officialdom, back in October 1959, conspired to deny the public its right to know the truth about such hard-core cases of UFO reality as exemplified by the Muza-Moore incident?
 
  From now on, we, the People, deserve better treatment -- and we demand it. Thank you, Harold Moore, for honoring that principle today.
 
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Larry W. Bryant's accumulation of these "Bryant's UFO View" installments has approached book-length dimensions. When he began the column several months ago, he was hoping to amass enough depth and variety for publishing an anthology of the more popular entries. He now welcomes readers' views on whether the time has arrived for producing that book. How about it: should he proceed, and do you have any favorite entries deserving of priority? Please let him know at his e-mail address (overtci@cavtel.net) or phone number (703-931-3341).
 
*[For the contents of that review, see Item 3.14 of this blog -- http://ufoview.posterous.com ]