Editing Donald Keyhoe (section)

==Later life==
NICAP's membership plummeted in the late 1960s, and Keyhoe was blamed by critics within NICAP for the organization's decline. Some NICAP members accused him of incompetent handling of NICAP's finances and personnel, and of being too authoritarian in his leadership style. By July 1969 NICAP was facing bankruptcy, and Keyhoe was forced to lay off five of NICAP's nine staff members.<ref>(Peebles, p. 231)</ref> Additionally, ''The UFO Investigator'', the organization's newsletter, which was edited and published by Keyhoe, gradually moved from being delivered on a reliable monthly basis in the mid-1960s to an increasingly erratic and unreliable delivery schedule, which angered many NICAP subscribers. In 1969 Keyhoe turned his focus away from the military and focused on the [[CIA]] as the source of the UFO cover up.  However, NICAP's Board of Governors, headed by Colonel Joseph Bryan III, investigated NICAP's finances and found that Social Security taxes had been withheld from employee's paychecks, but not reported to the government, and that some NICAP members had not paid their annual dues for years, but were still receiving copies of ''The UFO Investigator'' and enjoying full NICAP membership rights.<ref>(Peebles, pp. 231-232)</ref> In December 1969, in what was described as a "stormy meeting", the board forced Keyhoe to retire as NICAP chief.<ref>(Peebles, p. 232)</ref> Colonel Bryan became the new director of NICAP. Under Bryan's leadership, NICAP disbanded its local and state affiliate groups, and by 1973 it had been completely closed.<ref name = "UFO">{{Cite book| last =Denzler| first =Brenda| year =2003
| title =The Lure of the Edge: Scientific Passions, Religious Beliefs, and the Pursuit of UFOs| publisher =[[University of California Press]]| isbn =0-520-23905-9}}p. 17</ref>

In 1973, Keyhoe wrote his final book about UFOs, ''Aliens from Space''. It promoted "Operation Lure", a plan to entice extraterrestrials to land on Earth, and described the problems Keyhoe had getting information from government agents.<ref>{{Cite book | title = Fire Officer's Guide to Disaster Control | author = Charles William Bahme | editor = PennWell Books | editor-link = PennWell Books | year = 1992 | isbn = 0-912212-26-8 | page = 463 | publisher = Fire Engineering Books & Videos | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=wH7km8j6HKkC&q=Aliens+from+Space:+The+Real+Story+of+Unidentified+Flying+Objects&pg=PA463}}</ref>

Beyond this book, Keyhoe had little contact with ufology as he settled into retirement. However, he did speak at several UFO conferences after his ouster from NICAP. In 1981 he joined [[MUFON]]'s board of directors, but his membership was essentially in name only because of his declining health, and he had little to do with the organization. Donald Keyhoe died in 1988 at the age of 91.

Several of Keyhoe's books are now in the [[public domain]] and are available online.{{citation needed|date=January 2023}}