truth of the origins of UFO. As the United States established the first modern UFO investigation, the evaluation of UFO evidence requires us to consider the role of the government.
             The U.S. Government started investigating the UFO phenomenon in the last part of WWII. The first to study them was the U.S. Army Air Corps, which was concerned about bomber pilot reports of foo balls (also called Foo Fighters). Foo balls were metallic balls or balls of light which bomber pilots reported as chasing their airplanes on the left side. As UFOlogist Donald H. Menzel explains:
             When the Air Force investigated, they concluded that battle damaged aircraft flying at a strategic bombing altitude would encounter a layer of the atmosphere that usually had microscopic ice crystals floating in it. When the planes would fly through, dents and scratches in the plane's left wing would pick up these crystals in a large abundance, and the aircraft's speed would send them in a tornado-like motion. If the moon was full or the sun was shining, these tornadoes of ice crystals on the wing would reflect its light and appear as a metal ball chasing them (if the moon was out, the dark sky would make the crystals appear as a ball of light). (56)
             This was the USAF's first encounter with UFOs, and since then they have had an active role in the UFO investigations until 1969.
             In 1947, the beginning of the modern era of UFOs, a large number of sightings of UFOs around military installations concerned the Department of Defense enough to start a study of UFOs.
             In September of 1947, General Nathan F. Twining, head of Air Material Command recommended that a project be set up to study the increasing number of UFO reports. By December 1947 PROJECT: SIGN, the first official study of the UFO mystery had been established. By this time, two of the most famous UFO reports had already been made the Arnold sighting (in which a businessman flying across the North...