Donald Keyhoe Interview

Donald E. Keyhoe, graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy Annapolis was in active service with the U.S. Marine Corps, managed the tour of the historic plane used by Bennet and Bryd in the North Pole flight, was an aide to Charles Lindbergh after the famous Paris flight and was chief of information for the Aeronautics Branch, Department of Commerce.  He was a leading figure in NICAP and other public venues pushing for more research, more information and more openness between citizen searchers and government agencies.

He became the official bulldog of the early decades of the UFO phenomena, a Don Quixote tilting his lance at the windmills of government bureaucracy and secrecy on the behalf of the public's right to information. Like Professor Harold Hill of Music Man fame, he was the "raspberry seed in the wisdom tooth" of the the United States Air Force" - along with the dozens and dozens of citizen investigation groups (the spectrum of the serious to the fringe elements) dotting the American landscape from 1947 through 1969 (the heydey of these open groups). 

The parental "Government Knows Best" of the War years was fading but not everyone in government or the military had recognized that fact. The seeds of the social rebellion of the 1960's were already sprouting in response to social factors such as the coming of age post war babies, the nasty taste of the McCarthy era, and the rising social consciousness of millions that actions have consequences requiring as many voices to be heard as possible to insure that democracy could flourish. Add to this the scientific explosion that on one side said "anything is possible!" but on the other side said "anything BUT alien beings, crafts, or something science cannot identify."

Keyhoe was the forerunner of this new line in the sand, open mindedness, that will drive certain segments of society insane over the following decades.  Here is his interview with Mike Wallace in 1958.