A United States missile program supervisor claims that mysterious unidentified flying objects have seriously imperiled national security. The Air Force denies it. Raymond E. Fowler, project supervisor on a Minuteman missile program near Boston, asserts that [UFOs] have penetrated the restricted air space above America's missile sites, jamming vital electronic equipment. He also says the objects eluded fighter aircraft scrambled to intercept them... Specifically, Mr. Fowler says he talked with an Air Force officer who had been in one of the subterranean Launch Control Facilities [LCFs] of a North Dakota Minuteman site on August 25, 1966, when radar operators picked up a UFO maneuvering over the base at 100,000 feet. The officer declared that the LCF's sophisticated radio equipment, that enables it to receive firing instructions from coordinating centers and transmit them to the silo Launch Facilities [LFs] was blocked out by static when the UFO hovered directly over it. Mr. Fowler recalls the officer saying that he could conceive of "nothing. on earth" that could caused the equipment to malfunction from such an altitude, emphasizing that it was working perfectly before the object appeared overhead and after it left.

Asked to comment on Mr. Fowler's allegations, an Air Force spokesman in Washington declared that SAC, that operates the site, "could find nothing in its unit histories to confirm the presence of unidentified flying objects over it or indeed malfunctions in its equipment on the date mentioned."

Despite the Air Force's denial Dr. Hynek insists that the base was buzzed by a UFO. "I went there as the Air Force representative and talked to the people concerned after it happened," he says. Dr. Hynek was at that time acting as scientific consultant to Project Bluebook. Mr. Fowler says he was told that communications between land strike-teams [armed jeep patrols] dispatched to a spot where the first UFO appeared to land and intercepting aircraft [Note; F- 106's] were completely jammed by strong radio interference. Moreover, he says, missile site control found intense static disrupting communications with its strike-teams.

After UFOs had streaked away, Mr. Fowler claims that Air Force Intelligence teams, descended on the base telling those who had seen or heard anything to keep quiet... .He cites a Joint Chiefs of Staff regulation last updated in 1966, that establishes a system for reporting UFO sightings to the Aerospace Defense Command at Colorado Springs... and imposes penalties for the unauthorized disclosure of UFO information. But says an Air Force spokesman:

"We're out of the UFO business."