A Brief Outbreak of Truth
. . . There remained a few voices in the United States fighting UFO censorship. Keyhoe's was probably the most significant, but close behind was that of his friend, Mutual Radio broadcaster Frank Edwards. Before Art Bell, there was Frank Edwards, who was one of the key disseminators of UFO information during the early 1950s. In a 1953 nationwide poll of radio-TV editors by the trade paper Radio Daily, Edwards was named among the top three news broadcasters in the nation, along with Edward R. Murrow and Lowell Thomas. His audience was estimated at 13 million people every night. On January 13, 1954, Edwards alleged on his show that the wreckage of a flying saucer was being stored at a "west coast military field." Journalist Richard Reilly of the Washington Times-Herald was another "fanatical saucer believer." In three articles that began on December 26, 1953, Reilly questioned the Air Force's professed openness about UFOs, as it had become nearly impossible, he wrote, to obtain UFO reports.
Shortly after Reilly's article came the scoop (1/4/54) that U.S. Marines at Quantico had seen UFOs for several consecutive nights. The Washington Daily News even reported that it "ran into what seems a deliberate attempt to cover up certain facets of the investigation." At this time, the Cleveland Press, a Scripps-Howard paper, was asking authorities at ATIC for permission to see the Tremonton, Utah film. The Pentagon dragged its feet, but finally agreed to let a journalist see it at Dayton. By the time the reporter was ready to make the trip, ATIC told him that their only copy had just burned up. No worry, said ATIC, as there was a master copy at the Pentagon. When the reporter spoke with an Air Force spokesman at the Pentagon, he was told, "we have no copy here, but we believe there is one at Dayton." The reporter gave up. The Press ran a January 6 headline, "Brass Curtain Hides Flying Saucers."
Isolated segments of the media continued to work this theme. . . .