Albert Bender and the development of the Men in Black story

Witness account

Bender closed his International Flying Saucer Bureau and stopped its publication after implying that he had discovered disturbing information and had been warned to stop. Gray Barker’s 1956 They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers made the episode a major source of the Men in Black tradition. Bender’s own 1962 book supplied a more elaborate extraterrestrial account.

Public record

Contemporary newsletters and Bender–Barker correspondence allow the publication sequence to be reconstructed. The act of closing the organization is much better documented than the identity or even the presence of the alleged visitors.

Sources

• Saturday Night Uforia: The Tale of the Men in Black; publication and correspondence chronology
• David Halperin: Gray Barker, Albert Bender, Men in Black and the Summer of 1954