Donald E. Keyhoe: From Saucers to Swamp Gas

Donald E. Keyhoe was born in Iowa in 1897, so he was a 50-year-old man during the summer the flying saucers arrived in 1947. He went on to become the best-known figure on the topic, and this article is chiefly a scrapbook on him as a pioneering author and UFO lecturer. It’s not intended as a complete biography, but along the way we’ll hit some of his career highlights.  

Donald Edward Keyhoe was a retired Marine major who had served in World War I and became a writer of both news articles and fiction, including adventure stories for pulp magazines. 

In 1927 Charles Lindbergh made his historic solo trans-Atlantic flight. Afterwards, he flew across the US on a 3-month publicity tour, managed by retired Marine pilot Donald E. Keyhoe. The experience was later documented by Keyhoe in the 1928 book, Flying with Lindbergh. That was the start of Keyhoe’s new career as an author of adventure stories and non-fiction. 

Keyhoe’s article on the potential of rocketry and space in The Baltimore Sun, April 10, 1938, “To Paris by Rocket.” His closing lines discussed the price of being a pioneer:

“The first who dares will probably never be heard of again. Many others may follow and fail before the secrets of space are learned. But success will come. There has never been a frontier which man has not dared to cross.” 

In 1949 the editor of True magazine sent Keyhoe the assignment on the flying saucer story, hoping Keyhoe’s military contacts could help him penetrate the secrecy by the government. The resulting article was a sensation almost as big as the original fever of 1947, and along with the resulting 1950 book, The Flying Saucers Are Real, proved it was a bankable topic. Keyhoe was persuasive since he focused on factual, documented cases from credible witnesses, but he often leapt far ahead of the evidence. His message solidified some notions that had been circulating into the tenets of  UFO belief:

1) Flying saucers are spacecraft from other worlds. 

2) The government knows it. 

3) There is a government cover-up. 

Keyhoe was promoting flying saucers just as the Air Force was trying to close the book on the problem. They became the villain in Keyhoe's story, and to them, he was a major pain in the neck.

The Buffalo News - Daily News Ad, Jan. 6, 1950

When Keyhoe expanded the material into The Flying Saucers Are Real, he received some free press by claiming authorities were suppressing the book.

Reading Eagle, May 25, 1950

Clip of Donald Keyhoe that was used in the 1950 movie short, The Flying Saucer Mystery.

Keyhoe had a best-selling paperback book, and was in demand by the media, becoming a popular attraction on the lecture circuit. The typical flying saucer lecture was generally held at a public venue, anything from a gymnasium to an auditorium, with a modest admission or donation charged to attendees. The program usually included a speaker or two, followed by a question and answer session. There was also a table set up where the host could sell the guest’s merchandise, and also gather attendees’ addresses for mailing lists, and recruit new members for their organization. 

Keyhoe at press conference about the Washington, DC, UFOs of 1952

Keyhoe’s second book was Flying Saucers from Outer Space, this time a hardcover release.

Ventura County Star-Free Press, Oct. 1, 1953

“He's in demand for serious TV and radio performances, lectures and technical advice. Each morning an average of 20 letters are delivered to his home near Mount Vernon ‘from serious, respectable and the honest persons quote reporting the signings and offering additional information on saucers.’”

Keyhoe NEA news article, Dec. 24, 1953.

The Daily Times, May 15, 1954

Some Professional Advice

Donald Keyhoe frequently corresponded and “talked shop” with Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the head of the U.S. Air Force UFO investigation from 1951 until 1953. After Ruppelt retired from the AF, and in 1954 he was consulting for the movie, Unidentified Flying Objects: The True Story ofFlying Saucers (released May 1956) and began working on a book about his days with Project Blue Book. Ruppelt asked Keyhoe for business advice. Keyhoe’s June 28, 1954, reply detailed the grind of being on the lecture circuit: 

“You asked about lectures... don't sign up unless you get a good offer, better than the one I had. My outfit took 40% of the gross and I had to pay my own expenses. I wouldn't agree to less than a 70-30 split if I talked next season, and I'd try for 75-25%. You should be able to get some paid engagements out in your area, I think; I don t know any California bureaus, but your movie company people should know some names. You could arrange for evening talks, so they wouldn’t interfere with your work — or Saturday and Sunday appearances, before clubs, etc. Regular bureaus often get $250 for a luncheon engagement from the bigger luncheon clubs, Ad, Rotary, etc.

If you didn’t have to travel out of your area, you would make some money. They’d want about a 30-minute talk, for noonday clubs; 45 minutes to an hour for evening talks. My trouble was that I was scheduled for isolated talks involving expensive travel — to Milwaukee, Kansas City, Buffalo, etc. Considering the lost time, plus expenses, I figure I barely broke even; however, I did it at first in order to get more people talking about my book. I learned later that one good TV program, on a network, is worth twenty such lectures, probably worth a hundred of them.”

June 28, 1954

Flying Saucer Conspiracy, 1955

Detroit Free Press, April 8, 1956

Keyhoe had a 1956  movie based on his 1953 book. Sorta. Earth vs. the Flying Saucers, was "Suggested by the novel Flying Saucers from Outer Space..."

 

The Boston Globe, July 8, 1956

In 1956, Edward J. Ruppelt’s The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects was released, and a few passages had barbs about Keyhoe. Of his 1950 book, “Keyhoe had based his conjecture on fact, and his facts were correct, even if the conjecture wasn't.” Of Keyhoe’s 1953 book, Ruppelt said:

“The book was based on a few of our good UFO reports that were released… The details of the specific UFO sightings that he credits to the Air Force are factual, but in his interpretations of the incidents he blasts way out into the wild blue yonder.”

Daily Press (Newport News, VA), March 22, 1957

The Cincinnati Enquirer, March 25, 1957

The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) was founded in 1956, with Keyhoe becoming its director early the next year.

Democrat and Chronicle, Nov. 17, 1957

The Pittsburgh Press, Jan. 5, 1958

The Pittsburgh Press, Jan. 10, 1958

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Jan. 11, 1958 ad

Tulsa World, Sept. 7, 1958

The Oklahoma Courier, Oct. 4, 1958

Tulsa World, Nov. 5, 1958

George Adamski was the first Contactee, followed by many imitators came forward claiming to have met aliens, rode in their ships and heard their spiritual messages of cosmic peace  and brotherhood. Keyhoe thought it was all hokum.

UPI story, The Daily Herald, July 13, 1959

Flying Saucers: Top Secret, 1960

The Rock Island Argus, March 27, 1962

Keyhoe continued to get under the skin of the Air Force. In Jan. 1965, his picture appeared in a UFO newspaper article. 

Someone in Project Blue Book made an artistic alteration which might indicate they viewed him as a villain.

TV listing March 3, 1966

TV listing March 14, 1966. - The Pittsburgh Press, April 14, 1966

The Kingston Daily Freeman, April 19, 1966

Tulsa World, Nov. 18, 1966

The Y-12 Bulletin, Jan. 18, 1967 (Paper For Y-l2 Employees of Union Carbide Corporation—Nuclear Division, Oak Ridge, Tennessee.)

Swamp Gas

Project Blue Book’s “Swamp Gas” fiasco at the March 1966 flap in Ann Arbor, Michigan, caused a public outrage and an upsurge of interest in flying saucers. The demand for UFO lecturers was so great, two other speakers tried to horn in on Keyhoe’s territory, Jim Moseley, publisher of Saucer News, and the flying saucer physicist, Stanton Friedman.

Akron Beacon, March 30, 1967 (Friedman)

Mt. Vernon Register-News, April 11, 1967 (Moseley)

The findings of the government-contracted UFO evaluation led by Dr. Edward U. Condon was published as Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects in 1969. Keyhoe gave it the thumbs down.

Buffalo News, Jan. 11, 1969

NICAP was struggling with declining membership and financial problems, and in December 1969, the board forced Keyhoe to retire as director. Things continued to decay under the new leadership and NICAP was dissolved in 1980. 

Donald Keyhoe’s final book was Aliens From Space: The Real Story of Unidentified Flying Objects, 1973.

Review from Richmond Times-Dispatch, Dec. 29, 1973

Hynek on Keyhoe's Disclosure Campaign

In the 1975 book, The Edge of Reality, Dr. J. Allen Hynek was asked about UFO literature, “Would you recommend the books by Kehoe?” Hynek replied with some criticism:

“I wouldn't recommend that myself. When I have a seminar on UFOs I do not put that on the reading list, but if a person wants a sociological perspective he should have it, because Kehoe was very largely fighting city he. He took as his objective to vilify the Air Force, to try and get congressional investigations and prove that the Air Force was covering up. What he should have done, of course, was publish solid technical reports on cases and then the sheer weight of those would eventually have toppled the Air Force. But instead he kept importuning congressman and didn't get anywhere.”

Keyhoe on Flying Saucer Crash-Retrievals

The subject of crashed UFOs came up when Keyhoe appeared on a television show in 1975, debating UFOs with a colonel in the USAF. Here’s the Toronto, Canada show listing from The Ottawa Journal, March 15, 1975:

Sunday 7:30 March 16, 1975 (Channel 6) Great Debate Resolved: "That Unidentified Flying. Objects from Outer Space - Exist." Speaking for the motion is Major Donald Keyhoe, author of several books on the subject of UFOs. His opponent Is Colonel William T. Coleman, former chief of Public Information for the U.S. Air Force and a science fiction novelist.

 A recording of the show was archived in the Faded Discs project by Wendy Connors, in the collection “Profiles In Ufology” item no. 20: Major Donald E. Keyhoe and Col. William Coleman, USAF… 41:30

When asked about if any UFOs had been recovered and studied, Keyhoe brought up Silas Newton’s Aztec saucer story. (30:54 in the recording) 

“There was the story about the crashed UFOs way down in the southwest and the small beings who were deep frozen. As far as I’m concerned, you can write that one off. I investigated that for True magazine, years and years ago. The who men who were putting it out were really trying to raise some dough. There may have been such a thing that happened, but I never found any evidence of it.”

(Keyhoe didn’t mention the saucer crash tale in his Jan. 1950 True article, but did discuss it in his first book. He said he’d flown to Denver to investigate, but it “turned out as expected – a dud… a big joke. But in spite of this, the ‘little men’ story goes on and on.”) 

Recognition from MUFON

Ufologist Bob Pratt interviewed Keyhoe by telephone, “in 1977, 1978 and 1979 for thirty to fifty minutes each time.” See: Conversations with Major Keyhoe. 

The annual Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) Symposium was held July 29-30, 1978, in Dayton, Ohio. Major Donald E. Keyhoe delivered the lecture, “Behind the UFO Secrecy," opening with his tenet, “The UFO cover-up is the greatest deception in the history of the United States.” He was later named to MUFON's board of directors, to recognize his lifetime contributions.

MUFON Journal, April 1981

Throughout the 1980s, Keyhoe was often referred to in newspapers and occasionally reached for quotes. Major Donald E. Keyhoe died November 29, 1988, at the age of 91. His obituary appeared in the Washington Post, Dec. 2, 1988.

Lincoln Journal Star, Dec. 7, 1988

UFOs, Factoids, and True Confessions?

Legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh had some involvement with the UFO topic, and once discussed it with a famous buff, Dr. Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology. "Lucky Lindy" felt the information published on flying saucers was often distorted or untrue. Before we look at Lindbergh and UFOs, let's examine relating to his life of how facts can be replaced by fiction.

Witness statements and verbal testimony in UFO cases can be a problem. Even if truthful and accurate, their words can become twisted by reporters or investigators repeating the story. And of course, there’s the other problem. Sometimes, people lie. 

The question often comes up in relation to UFO reports: Why would someone make up a story? People do lie, and not just about UFOs. There may be lot of motives such as a desire for recognition, or fame and fortune. Sometimes they’ll do it as a bad joke. These falsehoods complicate the search for the truth and pollute the record when repeated by the media and those who record history. Sometimes without ill motive, the truth gets bent or broken, but once printed, endlessly cited as fact. Here’s two relevant definitions from Merriam-Webster: 

Fact: “a piece of information presented as having objective reality”

Factoid: “an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print.”

Factoid was a term coined in 1973 by Norman Mailer to describe pseudo-facts, “which have no existence before appearing in a magazine or newspaper, creations which are not so much lies as a product to manipulate emotion.” There’s a non-UFO example worth examination, an extraordinary claim that’s frequently repeated about one of the world’s most famous murder cases.

Charles A. Lindbergh (1902-1974), was the U.S. aviator who became internationally famous for making the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean on May 20-21, 1927. Our focus relates to the tragedy five years later, the abduction and death of his 20-month-old son.

The 2010 book, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology by Scott Lilienfeld et al, had as Myth #46 “Virtually All People Who Confess to a Crime Are Guilty of It,” stating, “false confessions aren’t uncommon in high-profile criminal cases. After world-famous aviator Charles Lindbergh’s son was kidnapped in 1932, more than 200 people confessed to the crime.”

The 1987 book Lilienfeld cited as a source was a dead end, as it did not provide its source. A search on Google on terms like “Lindbergh kidnapping 200 confessions” produces thousands of hits. What’s the basis for the claim? Many books, scholarly papers, and articles cite the following as a source. 

Confessions in the Courtroom by Lawrence S. Wrightsman and Saul Kassin, 1993. It stated:

“Voluntary false confessions, those purposefully offered in the absence of elicitation, are on the face of it the most enigmatic… Why, for example, did more than 200 people confess to the famous Lindbergh baby kidnapping? Apparently, a ‘morbid desire for notoriety’ could account for many of these as well as other examples in which numbers of false confessions are received for widely publicized crimes.” 

Their source was the 1959 book by O. John Rogge, Why Men Confess, which stated:

“More than 200 innocent people confessed to the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby. At least 17 innocent persons confessed to the highly publicized sex murder of Elizabeth Short, who was known as ‘the Black Dahlia’…”

Rogge listed his source as an article by Martin Abramson, “Why Innocent People Confess to Crimes,” from Why: The Magazine of Popular Psychology, Jan. 6, 1952. Why was a digest-sized magazine with a slightly sensational and gossipy tabloid flavor. 

I was unable to locate that issue, but Abramson recycled the material five years later in a popular general interest digest magazine, Coronet September 1957. Martin Abramson opened “Make-Believe Murderers” by discussing false confessions in the "Black Dahlia” murder, then he turned to other crimes:

“The Lindbergh kidnap-murder of 25 years ago attracted an all-time record high of 205 false confessions. And while innocents were pouring out their pleas of guilty, the man really guilty—Bruno Hauptmann— went to the electric chair insisting on his innocence. This rash of confessions helped create much of the confusion that marked the police investigation of the case, delayed justice for an appreciable period and triggered a widespread belief that others [were] equally guilty…”

Mark W. Falzini was the archivist at the New Jersey State Police Museum and is one of the foremost experts on the Lindbergh case. In his 2012 book, New Jersey's Lindbergh Kidnapping and Trial, he wrote:

“The Lindberghs immediately began to receive thousands of letters from the public—40,000 in the first month alone! One quarter were sympathy letters, one quarter came from psychics or people who had dreams about the baby, one quarter offered suggestions for the investigation, and the rest were crank letters.”

In the Lindbergh case, there were a few actual false confessions, but the majority of “confessions” were in the form of letters from malicious jokers. The FBI case file on the kidnapping states:

“One of the by-products of the Lindbergh case was a mass of misinformation received from the well-meaning but uninformed, and a deluge of crank letters written by insane persons, nitwits, persons with a degraded sense of humor, and others with fraudulent intent.” The report also listed five individuals and associates under the section “Frauds, Hoaxes and Unfounded Information.”

In Donald Anderson Laird’s 1935 book, More Zest for Life, he referred to instance of “the large number of false confessions that misdirect detectives and prosecutors. Take the flood of misleading and false confessions from all points of the civilized world from persons who ‘confessed’ being the kidnapers of the Lindbergh baby.” The 1943 memoirs of a newsman, Where's Sammy? By Sammy Schulman and ‎Bob Considine, described some of those crank letters:

 “The very next afternoon after the kidnapping, the local RFD man had three sacks of mail to deliver to the Lindberghs, and among the letters were dozens of ‘confessions’ by the mentally unbalanced. Many claimed to have the baby. The case was seriously affecting every addled brain in the country.”

The term confession is frequently used in a casual sense in conversations, like “I confess I cheated on my diet today.” Confession in the Catholic Church is a disclosure of one's sins in the sacrament of reconciliation. Legally, to confess generally means a criminal making a voluntary admission to authorities, either orally or in writing. Mailing an anonymous letter with an outrageous claim is quite a different matter than making the statement in public - or face to face with the police.

Some of the letters in the Lindbergh case were by pranksters, others were frauds claiming to be the kidnappers asking for the ransom money. Martin Abramson referred to these crank letters hyperbolically as “confessions” back in 1952, and other writers just repeated the anecdote. Since then, the factoid has been cited as fact, even in legal and scholarly discussions about aspects and ethics of criminal confessions.

UFO researcher on 75th anniversary of Roswell incident.

UFO cases are generally less well-documented and far more confusing than the Lindbergh kidnapping story. If the basic facts in such a famous criminal case can get distorted in print, it serves as a warning that what we’ve been told is UFO history could be just as flawed. 

Charles Lindbergh on Saucers and Space Exploration

Now for something that’s actually about flying saucers, including a meeting between two historic figures to discuss the reality of UFOs.

In 1927 Charles Lindbergh made his history-making solo trans-Atlantic flight in his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis. Afterwards, he flew across the US in a 3-month publicity tour, managed by retired Marine pilot Donald E. Keyhoe. The experience was later documented by Keyhoe in the 1928 book, Flying with Lindbergh. That was the start of Keyhoe’s new career as an author of adventure stories and non-fiction, but his biggest fame came from the 1950 book, The Flying Saucers are Real.

After World War II, Lindbergh served as a consultant to the US Air Force and to Pan American World Airways. He also was interested in rocketry and was influential in obtaining financing for its research and development. Below is a photo of him during a visit to check on the progress at Roswell, New Mexico. 

 Life July 4, 1969: “In 1935 Lindbergh and space pioneer Robert Goddard stood together in the center of a group at Goddard's experimental rocket testing facility in Roswell, N. Mex.”

In 1942, Charles H. Zimmerman built a single-wing circular airfoil, the Chance Vought V-173, nicknamed the Flying Pancake. This propeller driven disk-shaped plane was tested in 190 flights up until March 1947. One of the pilots to fly the saucer-like plane was Charles Lindbergh, who thought it handled well.

UP photo, July 3, 1947

The Flying Pancake in Flying magazine, July 1950

The famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung wrote the 1958 book, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies. In 1959 Jung requested a meeting with Charles Lindbergh in to discuss flying saucers and the works of Donald E. Keyhoe. Ten years later, he wrote a letter recalling their meeting and it was later published  as “A Visit from Lindbergh,” in the 1978 book, C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters.  It revealed Lindbergh's interest and involvement with the UFO topic.

 Lindbergh felt Jung had been persuaded by both facts and factoids in UFO literature.

“I had expected a fascinating discussion about psychological aspects of the numerous and recurring flying saucer reports. To my astonishment, I found that Jung accepted flying saucers as factual. When I told Jung that the U.S. Air Force had investigated hundreds of reported flying-saucer sightings without finding the slightest evidence of supernatural phenomena, it was obvious that he did not wish to pursue the subject farther.”

Instead, Jung wanted to talk about saucer stories he’d heard and “referred to Donald Keyhoe’s recent book about flying saucers.”

Lindbergh had also read Keyhoe’s books and was able to provide Jung with examples of how the author exaggerated things, “to substantiate his claims about the reality of flying saucers.” He cited Keyhoe’s description of a secret high-level Pentagon meeting on the UFO topic as an example:

“... the officials attending the conference felt the situation was so alarming and serious that the information discussed should be withheld from public knowledge. I told Jung I had been working closely with the Air Force, as a consultant, at the time, and that Pentagon officials were not alarmed by reports on flying saucers, but astonished at the stories they read about flying saucers in the newspapers. The conference was called as a result of the plea, ‘For God's sake, somebody tell us what it's all about.’ It was not a secret conference. So far as I could judge, Jung showed not the slightest interest in these facts.”

Lindbergh portrayed Jung as being a bit cranky:

"I then described a discussion on flying-saucer reports I had carried on with General Spaatz (an old friend and Chief of the United States Air Force). ... Spaatz, in his dryly humorous way, had replied: 'Slim, don't you suppose that if there was anything true about this flying-saucer business, you and I would have heard about it by this time?' To this, Jung replied: 'There are a great many things going on around this earth that you and General Spaatz don't know about.' Thereafter, I departed from the subject of flying saucers."

Lindbergh was perplexed that Jung was uninterested in discussing "either psychological aspects or facts relating to flying saucers.” He concluded, 

“I was fascinated by Jung. One intuitively feels the elements of mysticism and greatness about him—even though they may have been mixed, at times, with elements of charlatanism. I liked Anne's not unadmiring description of Jung as 'an old wizard.' ...the 'Old Wizard' just didn't open his mind to me on the subject of flying saucers. ... Jung was such an extraordinary man, surely one of our time's great geniuses. My admiration and respect for him remain, and I continue to find tremendous stimulation in his writings; but I approach his statements and conclusions with even greater caution than in the past." 

Lindbergh on Life, the Universe and Everything

A decade later, Life magazine asked Lindbergh to write an article about his views on the exploration of space. In a remarkable and lengthy reply, he refused. It was published in Life July 4, 1969, as “A Letter from Lindbergh.”

He explained how his priorities had evolved over his life and career. He had lost his interest in technology and more interested in nature, philosophy, and other big questions, such as: “What would be the result of artificially perfusing a head severed from its body? This question, especially, intrigued me…”

Lindbergh thought the limitations of technology (and our own bodies) might keep us from achieving interstellar travel. Instead, he wondered about a far-out spiritual journey.

“Will we find [physical] life to be only a stage... discover that only without spaceships can we reach the galaxies; that only without cyclotrons can we know the interior of atoms? … I believe it is through sensing and thinking about such concepts that great adventures of the future will be found.”

Charles Lindbergh died five years later at the age of 72, on August 27, 1974.