{p. 82}

startled by seeing a group of disks racing past his plane. Air Force
investigators later suggested that he had flown through a flock of
birds, or perhaps a cluster of balloons,

On the flight back to Washington, I reread all the information the Air
Force had released on Project "Saucer." Suddenly a familiar phrase
caught my eye. I read over the paragraph again:

"Preliminary study of the more than 240 domestic and thirty foreign
incidents by Astro-Physicist Hynek indicates that an over-all total of
about 30% can probably be explained away as astronomical phenomena."

Explained away
.

I went through the report line by line. On page 17 I found this:

"Available preliminary reports now indicate that a great number of
sightings can be explained away as ordinary occurrences which have
been misrepresented as a result of human errors."

On page 22 I ran onto another use of the phrase:

"The obvious explanation for most of the spherical-shaped objects
reported, as already mentioned, is that they are meteorological or
similar type balloons. This, however, does not explain reports that
they travel at high speed or maneuver rapidly. But 'Saucer' men point