Chapter

direct quote from the Hoover files on Hunrath. Rather oddly, the FBI clearly got its wires crossed when its agents said they had heard that the BOSCO machine was to arrive in the mail!

Although this latter point was completely untrue, Adamski realized immediately that the FBI agents were actually talking about Hunrath. Adamski corrected the agents and said that no, BOSCO was not coming via the Post Office—it was in Hunraths’s hands already. Quite reasonably, the question might be asked, why not bring Hunrath in for questioning and settle matters, once and for all, regarding the man and his curiously named machine-friend, BOSCO? Simple: there were rumors floating around the FBI—which even George Hunt Williamson mysteriously managed to get a hold of, though how is a mystery unlikely to ever be resolved— that Hunrath had been secretly recruited by the Soviets to seek out the truth about flying saucers under the guise of simply being interested in the subject. But, if that was the case, then it was apparent to the bureau that Hunrath had to be a very small fish in a pond populated, somewhere in its murky depths, by extremely large fish of a red color that were secretly pulling the strings. So, the plan was to sit back and watch where Hunrath went, whom he spoke to, and what he did, and then try to reel in all the players—American and Russian—in one go. “Wait and see” was very much the name of the game.

While all of this was going on behind a thick veil of government secrecy, Wilkinson had got himself a job in Los Angeles with the Hoffman Radio Corporation—as head of the inspection department, no less. It was a good job, one which he had no desire to lose. In light of this, it’s scarcely a surprise that Wilkinson became extremely worried about how his links to Hunrath might cause him trouble—and possibly even cause him to be fired from his new job. Wilkinson didn’t exactly sever ties with his friend, but by 1953, he was content with Hunrath keeping him informed on what was going on in Saucer World, rather than playing a direct role in the subject.

Unfortunately for Wilkinson, he couldn’t quite maintain that detached approach for too long: like a moth to a flame, he was soon back in the fold