The Birth of NICAP
. . . In May, NICAP nearly printed a phony UFO crash story that was said to take place in the Everglades, based on an account it received by AP wire. The crash story struck Keyhoe as too sensational to be credible, and he checked directly with AP, which acknowledged that, while the wires looked genuine, the story was "definitely fake." The company traced the story to an AP employee who had been "a former Signal Corps engineer" familiar with teletype systems. The employee admitted to faking the stories, refused to give any motive, and stubbornly denied involvement of anyone else. This was pretty strong stuff when Keyhoe published the account in 1960. But neither Keyhoe nor anyone else knew at that time that Shamrock – an operation run by the NSA, formerly by the Signal Corps – was intercepting electronic transmissions on a daily basis throughout the U.S. and abroad. Evidently, Shamrock was also spreading disinformation relating to UFOs.