Albert Bender founded the International Flying Saucer Bureau in Bridgeport in 1952, 600 members worldwide. In 1953 he claimed three men in black visited him and ordered him to stop; the October 1953 final issue of Space Review printed the warning that the saucer mystery was solved but withheld by orders from a higher source, advising saucer workers to be very cautious. The Bridgeport Herald covered it that November. Gray Barker's 1956 They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers gave the world the phrase Men in Black.
The story as Bender eventually told it: the men were not government at all. They floated, glowed bluish, smelled of sulphur, spoke telepathically, and were not of this Earth. His 1962 own account described them as supernatural and anticlimactically revealed the great secret: an underground UFO base in Antarctica, discovered during astral projection. Barker had wanted a government cover-up thriller; Bender delivered a ghost story. Both sold.
The claim with receipts on both sides: Barker privately admitted fabricating for profit and once planted a fictional MIB notice with a collaborator to prove fans would swallow anything, they did. Yet the Skeptical Inquirer concedes a grain of truth: 1950s agencies really did investigate and discourage saucer clubs, fearing hysteria channels. The Men in Black are a myth built on a real practice, embellished by a showman, swallowed by a culture that preferred the showman's version.
Barker privately admitted he made things up for money, and the Air Force really did discourage saucer clubs. Which half of the story is the Men in Black?