So I went up to Big Sur, California, up on an air -- on the U.S. Forest Service road on Anderson Peak and installed a telescopic site up there. And the Air Force flew in a huge catarctic telescope from the Cape. It was built by Dr. Walter Manning at the Boston University.

They put this telescope up there. And with that thing, which had a focal length of 2,500 inches, we photographed an Atlas missile raising up out of the fog cover and flying downrange. We got all three stages of powered flight. And as the dummy warhead and the package flew on down the range, we were all celebrating the fact that we had seen the thing and accomplished the mission.

When I got back to the base with the film, the next day I was called into the office of Major Florenze J. Mansmann. And there were three people in gray suits standing in there. There was a .16 millimeter camera and a screen set up.

Major Mansmann said lieutenant, sit down and watch this. And he turned down the lights, turned on the camera -- on the projector and the film came on. And I recognized it as the film that we had shot at Big Sur the previous day.

Toward the end of the flight, I was looking at Major Mansmann saying pretty good stuff, huh sir?

And suddenly he said just watch this.

And as I watched, the warhead -- the dummy warhead, the chaff that was put out in front of it as the decoy to deflect the Russian anti-missile missile tracking radar -- everything was flying along and suddenly, in the same direction this stuff was flying, at about 8,000 miles an hour, an object came into the frame, shot a beam of light at the warhead, flew up to the top, shot another beam of light at the warhead, flew around the direction it was flying, shot another beam of light at the warhead, flew down to shoot another beam of light at the warhead and then flew out the same way it came in.

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