Col. Donald L. Bower
Col Donald Bower was Ruppelt's boss as Chief of the ATIC Technical Analysis Division from May to Dec. 31, 1952. (Brad Sparks)
On Oct 23, 1952, there was a BB UFO briefing for the entire Los Alamos Scientific Lab.  Afterwards Dr. Crew pulled together a group of Los Alamos personnel to meet privately with Ruppelt and Col. Bower to discuss radiation UFO evidence and info they had from Palomar, Los Alamos, and Oak Ridge on possible and actual UFO radiation incidents there. From the data obtained it was advisable to contact these people again to get more details to determine if ATIC should make a complete study on the subject. (Dec, 2, Joint Message).  But handwritten notes on the travel orders state: "Killed by order of Col Bower 2 Dec 1952." (Fran Ridge) Ruppelt made the trip to Los Alamos on Jan. 4-7, 1953, after all.  It was political as shown in the closely-related Ruppelt trip to CIA that also got "killed" by Col. Bower: CIA's Fred Durant wrote on Dec 9, 1952, that according to Ruppelt it was Col. Bower who was blocking Ruppelt's trip to Washington DC to visit the CIA because Ruppelt wanted to visit CIA and provide them with investigative reports on the sensational cases Bower and Fournet had just briefed CIA about (on Nov. 25).  These reports would prematurely blow up the whole AF charade.  Bower and Fournet withheld from CIA the fact that all 3 of these major purported UFO Unknown cases briefed to CIA (and repeatedly written up by Chadwell to the CIA Director) had already been previously concluded by the AF to be IFO's/Hoax.  These 3 cases included the notorious Florida Scoutmaster Hoax, the Maine case of AF theodolites mistakenly tracking Jupiter and its 4 moons as a UFO at extreme altitude with 4 satellite UFO's, already explained by Hynek, and the Tremonton film explained by Ruppelt as birds, seagulls, but not told to CIA. (Sparks)