Ko-Ko: Well, a nice mess you've got us into, with your nodding head . . .
Pooh-Bah: Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.
— The Mikado
In June 1947, a private pilot named Kenneth Arnold told reporters a wonderful yarn. While flying alone over Washington's Mount Rainier, he said, he had spotted nine round, shiny, mysterious objects. flipping and flashing along in the sky "like saucers." Since then U.S. newspapers and magazines have credulously — or jokingly— printed hundreds of other stories about flying saucers, usually based on "reports of eyewitnesses." The witnesses generally seemed to believe that flying saucers exist, that they were manufactured by the U.S. or Russia, or came from the outer reaches— maybe from Venus or Mars.
Last week, in cocktail bars from Boston to San Bernardino, true believers renewed their faith, for they had a notable recruit: David Lawrence's U.S. News and World Report (circ. 365,492). A news magazine with a reputation for sobriety and conservatism, U.S. News devoted three pages to a story and pictures headlined FLYING
SAUCERS —THE REAL STORY: U.S. BUILT
FIRST ONE IN 1942. Gist of the account: as part of its guided-missile program, the Navy has developed a revolutionary type aircraft, a combination helicopter and jet plane capable of outflying any other; it is this plane that is the flying saucer.
Later in the week, Editor Lawrence said the same thing in his sober, respected column in the New York Herald Tribune and 200 other newspapers. In a notable omission of a pertinent fact, Lawrence cited U.S. News as an authority, but neglected to mention that he publishes it. As another authority he quoted one Commander Robert Bright McLaughlin, U.S.N., author of an article in the March issue of True, to the solemn effect that flying saucers are real.
The U.S. News story gave the flying-saucers-are-real thesis a big boost. It was put out over the air last week by ABC's Henry J. Taylor and ("for what it's worth") by Mutual's Fulton Lewis Jr.; it was the subject of a documentary, neither pro nor con, by CBS's Edward R. Murrow. Columnist Robert Ruark declared that "I believe . . ." Henry Holt announced a "serious" book on flying saucers by Variety's Columnist Frank Scully. The Herald Trib, pooh-poohing the U.S. News article, concluded: "And yet—And yet there is something puzzling about the business . . ."
"Wild Statements." What puzzled many Washington newsmen and officials was: How and why did the U.S. News fall for the flying-saucer story? According to Managing Editor L. Noble Robinson, U.S. News "got the idea" for its story from Commander McLaughlin, the same man who wrote the True story. U.S. News did not talk to McLaughlin ("He was out at sea") and did not quote him by name; but the editors had evidently relied heavily on his reports. In port at Boston last week with his destroyer Bristol, McLaughlin disavowed the U.S. News piece as full of "wild statements."