March 31, 2024 — Linda C. Powell with Tim Swartz

This episode features better audio and fewer ads: Gene and cohost Tim Swartz remember one of the key figures of the early UFO field, as we interview Linda C. Powell, news editor for The Anomalist. She is the author of “Against the Odds: Major Donald E. Keyhoe and His Battle to End UFO Secrecy: A Biography.” In UFO lore, one man is largely responsible for the twin pillars of current belief: that UFOs represent extraterrestrial technology and that the government is hiding this truth from us. His name is Donald E. Keyhoe. He was a 51-year-old retired Marine Major when his own investigation of a famous 1948 flying saucer case led him to believe that the US Air Force and the CIA knew the Earth was under surveillance by beings from other worlds and were keeping it secret from the public. For the next 21 years, he devoted himself, at great personal cost, to exposing the official cover-up of what he believed was an alien visitation. Thanks to his highly-placed contacts in the military and secret informants in the Pentagon, Keyhoe became the first major figure to truly challenge the official view that UFO reports belonged in the domain of “kooks and fuzzy thinkers.” He eventually led what became the world’s most powerful civilian UFO organization for its time, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). You’ll also learn all about Gene’s early encounters with Keyhoe between 1965 and 1975, and some of the controversies that arose over Keyhoe’s attempts to run NICAP as a lobbying arm for UFO disclosure.