Left: Captain Edward J Ruppelt, standing, and Air Force Director of Intelligence John A. Samford in July, 1952.
HE WAS THERE for one of the two most critical times in the annals of ufology.
And though the first critical period of summer 1947 had produced reams of classified records documenting the events, the thinking and the tenor of the times, it was only Captain Edward J. Ruppelt who, after the second great UFO wave of 1952, dared step out from behind the curtain of official obfuscation to give the public a mostly unvarnished and personal view of the situation -- as he had seen it from the inside -- in his 1956 classic book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects.
It is perhaps then a fitting tribute to this spirit of openness that fate decreed the book's copyright would lapse in the United States, allowing some of the most interesting excerpts to now be reproduced here...
The diary is being transferred to its new home at Saturday Night Uforia and will be posted Saturday, February 11, 2012.