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

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

May 20, 1958

Mr. Leon Davidson 64 Prospect Street White Plains, N.Y.

Dear Mr. Davidson:

I received one verbal and one written answer to my query. The written answer was quite definite. The release had been written in "governmentese" purposely, but it was not expected that there would be any release. There was to be no further statement from the group. A second man told me more definitely that he was astonished at the wording of the document that he had, presumably signed. He agreed with me about its indefiniteness and thought that it would do harm. But then he pointed out that no matter what you said the flying saucer people would get you somehow or other.

If I hear of anything more of interest I will keep you informed. I find Ruppelt's letter interesting and certainly it throws light on some of the activities of that agency. In my opinion it further verifies Ruppelt's incompetence for the job that he was given. I mean this not as a criticism, because one cannot always control the assignment and doubtless he did the best he could. But I've never seen a project worse handled than the early stages of the flying saucer program. I had one of those "briefing sessions" and particularly recall one incident.

See page B |

In my emphasis that these were natural phenomena, say mirages for example, one of the men said "suppose that we granted for a moment, that you are correct. Doesn't it occur to you that we might be able to use this information in reverse?"

"You mean as a counter measure?" I asked.

"Exactly!"

"You mean you would like to use this phenomenon, say, to produce an image of Christ over the kremlin?"

"Yes that's an excellent example," he said.

"Absolute nonsense!" I replied. I then went on to state emphatically that I was not going to be muzzled by any considerations of security or secrecy in this development. As I recall, General Sanford was present at these meetings.

As a result, they agreed to open up the Blue Book files to me. In fact Ruppelt was requested to bring them to me

so that I could study them. Well, not only did Ruppelt never come, but he further immediately moved in to classify the files and I was not permitted, as Keyhoe and others have indicated, to get this information. On one occasion, however, I was told to come over and see all of the files and they would throw them open.

I went over to the Pentagon where the scientist in charge of this bureau immediately pulled out great drawers of these things and said "now here you can see for yourself exactly what is in them." He said "I know you have security clearance."

I asked him if the files were classified and that if anything that I happen to see in those files and wanted to quote it would be similarly classified. He said yes that I was not permitted to quote. I said "no thank you!" and thus avoided what might conceivably have been a trap to muzzle me.