Major Donald E. Keyhoe

Donald Edward Keyhoe was a retired Marine Corps Major, naval aviator, and aide to Charles Lindbergh who became the most prominent public advocate for UFO disclosure in the 1950s and 1960s. His 1950 article in True magazine, "The Flying Saucers Are Real," reached millions of readers and argued that the US government was concealing evidence of extraterrestrial visitors. The book that followed became a bestseller.

Keyhoe took over as director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in 1957 and transformed it into the most politically effective civilian UFO organisation in history. Under his leadership NICAP cultivated contacts in Congress, the military, and the intelligence community, pushing for open congressional hearings. He was cut off mid-sentence during a live CBS television interview in 1958 when he began to discuss classified military UFO encounters, an incident that became a cause celebre.

His confrontational approach worked. NICAP's pressure contributed to the Air Force commissioning the University of Colorado study (the Condon Committee) in 1966, though Keyhoe was deeply critical of the study's predetermined conclusions. He published five books making the case that military pilots were encountering structured craft that outperformed any known technology, and that the Pentagon knew it.

Keyhoe was forced out of NICAP in 1969 under disputed circumstances. Some researchers believe the organisation had been infiltrated by intelligence agencies seeking to neutralise it. NICAP declined rapidly after his departure and folded in 1980.