Easing Toward Roswell #5: Only Certain People Are Qualified To Hear The Truth. Howard Blum's Book Out There, Part Two

"In the beginning was the file."  p. 62   In summer 1947 the commanding general of Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio got a request from a civilian pilot in Wash. St to explain nine very fast shiny objects flying near Mt. Rainier.
He opened a file on the matter.  First it was called Project Sign.  Later it became Project Grudge.  In March 1952 it turned into Project Blue Book.  The gov kept investigating "wierd sightings" under Blue Book for 17 years, until 1969. 
Lots of unexplained sightings came in.  In February 1949, Sign summarized 243 sightings by saying we haven't solved the mystery and probably won't unless we can examine crashed remains.  You might think that, if Roswell had offered exactly that 18 months earlier, Sign would know about it.  Maybe they did.  Maybe they just didn't tell.  Why not?  Good Germans.  Or it could be that the right hand of the Fed Gov didn't know what the left hand was doing. 
A report from Project Grudge looked at over 200 sightings and wrote off the nationwide concern as so much silliness.  The official attitude told to the public was firm skepticism.  Yet, Blum writes, it was all an act.

In 1948 an Air Force Technical Intel Estimate concluded that UFOs came from somewhere besides Earth.  Yet the AF Chief Vandenberg (p. 64) held off on putting the report out because it lacked evidence.  Still, to the analysts buried in the details of the report, the 1000 pieces of half-evidence added up to concluding "Yes."  They didn't get to say that to the public, even if they admitted they were still guessing.  Nobody got to give a speech in public saying, "I've studied hundreds of these cases and I'm telling you I Just Know some of them aren't humans from Earth.  I don't have hard proof, but I'm sold!"

National defense required that all these seemingly unexplainable events, and the high-level concern about them, not be shared in detail with the man in the street, until more was known.  That was five decades ago.  Is no more known now, or have we the people yet to hear what our officials possess?  Civilian panic had to be avoided--we can all agree with that goal--remember the radio program of War of the Worlds in the 1930s?  It panicked some listeners who took it for a real news broadcast.

So now it became an insider's game.  The rule:  tell them when we can be sure it is something routine.  If we can't explain it, just say we're checking on it. p. 65   Blum writes "There were no lies, just necessary deceptions."  Not to worry--the Air Force is on top of the situation and UFOs are its job.  This was the situation when Pres. Eisenhower left office in 1960.  "Candor was not in the national interest," Blum says.

Air Force rule 11-7:  In certain situations info not to be given to Congress "even in confidence."  A strict need to know rule applies, and the civilian representatives of the people weren't high enough on the totem pole to hear the truth.  Does this hint at how Roswell, also, could have been covered up by similar reasoning?  Again, Blum:  "A fundamental law of spook behavior, as inviolable as an axion of physics itself . . . For every story shared, there was one buried."    So the gov was anxious but did it really know something?