McLeod's mysterious caller, I learn, was Bill Hoover at the David Taylor Model Basin headquarters in Carderock, Maryland. Hoover, as it happens, was in charge of the "pop-up" model tests in Lake Pend Oreille, the ones that some witnesses mistook for sub-launched missiles, and he remembers calling someone--probably McLeod, he says--after reading a newspaper article that mentioned McLeod's estimate of the lake's depth exceeding the Navy's. "If you are pulling models down and letting them rise, like I was," Hoover explains, "the deeper the lake, the better. So I wanted to know if there was part of the lake that was deeper than 1,160 feet. But I don't recall getting an answer from him, and it just stretched out and stretched out and I lost interest in it."

So McLeod's Cryptoquest call turns out to be entirely innocent, and the Navy provides a rational explanation of its activities in Lake Pend Oreille. But the fact stands that for half a century, the Navy hid what it was doing at the lake, and that alone provides sufficient motivation to establish a cover story. Thus, McLeod's basic theory may still be correct. Sadly, we probably have no way of ever knowing for sure. None of the employees who worked at the base 50 years ago remain to tell what they know, and if the Navy did use the lake monster as a cover story, it's not likely to ever admit it.