I am, as usual, grateful to the usual suspects, especially to my editor at Random House, Jonathan Karp, not only for his excellent suggestions and guidance, but also for (finally) coming up with a decent title. Martha Schwartz and her able copy team did another fine job. Thanks also to John Tierney and to Greg Zorthian for their eagle eyes. Doctors David E. Williams and William S. Hughes were standing by with their PDRs at the ready. Amanda Urban of ICM saw the green in the little men. My wife, Lucy, was, as always, a devoted encourager. Certain people within various UFO organizations were welcoming and helpful. They would probably, under the circumstances, prefer anonymity. I am grateful to, and commend to anyone interested in this subject, Keith Thompson’s book, Angels and Aliens. It was amidst those wise and excellent pages that I first came across Majestic Twelve. It provided an irresistible cue ball, needing only a bit of English. And finally, thanks to the forty-second president of the United States, who during a chance encounter expressed an interest in this project that seemed to go beyond the merely polite. I understood why when, a few weeks later, I came across the newspaper story that provides the second epigraph at the front of this book. I hope that he found his answers.
—Blue Hill
August 18, 1998