Air Force Project Blue Book Special Report 14 (Hynek's annotated copy)

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

A letter from a former Air Force officer, in response to request for comment on the Panel Report.

May 7,1958

Mr. Leon Davidson 64 Prospect Street White Plains, New York

Dear Mr. Davidson,

has forwarded your letter of April 28th and, although I have retired from the UFO controversy, I will attempt to shed some light on your problem.

First, the Air Force had nothing to do with the meeting of the scientific panel you refer to. It was completely set up and carried out by another government agency. Secondly, to my knowledge, no written report was ever made. Such a report was suggested during the meeting but rejected as a waste of time, effort and money. I didn't mean to infer in my book that a full written report was made.

I don't recall seeing the mimeographed piece of paper that you enclosed in your letter ; the only piece of paper I ever saw that was produced by the panel was an unclassified two-sheet statement which I believe was designed to be released to the press. It was referred to as "the white paper on UFO's." It was given to Air Force intelligence by the agency sponsoring the meeting and at least one copy reached ATIC but it was never released to the press. It said essentially the same thing as the one you enclosed in your letter except it spelled out each point in a little more detail and it was the source of the quote on page 291 of my book.

In stating the above, I do not mean to infer that the piece of paper describing the panel meeting which you enclosed in your letter (and which I assume was released by the Air Force) is incorrect. It could well be in addition to the two-page document I referred to.

Now, in regard to the recommendations: several days after the panel meeting I went from Dayton to Washington and, along with Brigadier General Garland, then the Chief at ATIC, visited the agency that sponsored the panel meeting. We were told that the panel had recommended:

a. Project Blue Book be expanded.

1. Specialists should be added to the staff.

2. Instruments should be set up.

b. All secrecy should be stripped from the project.

## See page B-1

I assume that these were the written recommendations of the panel because they were being read from a piece of paper and I had heard the panel verbally agree on them a few days before.

After I returned to ATIC, General Garland told me he had discussed the recommendations with Major General Samford, then the Director of Intelligence, and that I was to carry them out.

Recommendation "a" above could not be carried out because of a lack of money and the virtual impossibility of getting civil service positions at ATIC. Secondly, there were many people who doubted the value of expanding the project. As a "next-best" move, the 4602nd AIS of Air Defense Command was tied into Project Blue Book and, in actuality, the project was quadrupled in size.

General Garland personally pushed the recommended instrumentation program but again money was the problem. I visited many people and companies to get information on tracking equipment. The instrumentation program was carried out but degenerated down to the famous grid-camera fiasco, which is well known, and an ADC effort in accelerating their program to put cameras on radar scopes. (The grid-camera program was in the mill at the time but had bogged down.)

In my book I stated that the reason for these recommendations was that the panel was not sure about the UFO reports; there might be something there. This was true; there might be something. But the panel's major reason for recommending that the UFO investigation program be expanded, I understood from the discussion, was to learn why so-called "experienced people" went into a tizzy whenever a UFO was reported. By this I mean pilots were fighting with balloons and planets, radar operators were tracking and plotting interference, etc.

I do not care to discuss this aspect further but I believe you can realize the problem and why I didn't pursue the point in my book.

The panel seemed unanimous in agreeing that an expensive tracking range or system would pay for itself in the negative information it would gather. It would be worth the million or so dollars it would cost to operate the tracking net for a year or two to be able to say absolutely nothing had been detected. The UFO project had already cost that much and the panel could visualize more money being spent if a solution were not reached.

The recommendation to release everything, recommendation "b", was vetoed. The reason was that we had tried it in 1952 and some people took the information we put out in good faith,

THIS LETTER IS CONTINUED ON PAGE B 5