Documents / Hearing transcript
This is the printed transcript of an April 5, 1966 hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Armed Services on unidentified flying objects. Air Force Secretary Harold Brown testified that 9,501 of 10,147 sightings from 1947 through 1965 had been identified and that no threat or extraterrestrial evidence had been found. The record includes the Scientific Advisory Board ad hoc committee report recommending university studies and the Air Force's marsh gas explanation for the Dexter and Hillsdale, Michigan sightings. Members also questioned J. Allen Hynek and Maj. Hector Quintanilla about the Exeter, New Hampshire case.
“The Pentagon”5 pages
6046 number of unexplained cases where the data is not sufficiently precise to be helpful in an analysis. Mr. NEDZI. My final question, Doctor, would be whether—and I think you touched upon this—whether there has been ever any evidence in any of these unexplained sightings that would indicate that there is some kind of extraterrestial intelligence involved? Dr. HYNEK. I believe I have covered that. I have not seen any evidence to confirm this, nor have I know any competent scientist who has, or who believes that any kind of extraterrestrial intelligence is involved. However,the possibility should be kept open as a possible hypothesis. I don't think we should ever close our minds to it. But certainly there is no real evidence of intelligent behavior of hardwares. If we had received periodic visits by controlled space vehicles since 1947, or earlier, it is likely they would have had some kind of trouble at some time and dropped something off the coast of Spain or some place, and we have not come across any positive proof like that. Mr. NEDZI. Mr. Chairman, until the sightings get a little closer to my district,I have no further questions. The CHAIRMAN. I recognize Mr. Chamberlain,then I go to Governor Stafford and Mr. Hebert, because I want to get as close to the districts as I can. I want to put in the record Mr. Ford's letter, and the response by Secretary Brown. What else, Mr. Blandford,ought to go in the record? Mr. BLANDFORD. That is all that ought to be in at this time. The CHAIRMAN. Without objection, we will put all of these in the record. I want to shed as much light on these illuminated objects a Q we can. (The material above referred to is as follows:) CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, OFFICE OF THE MINORITY LEADER, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, D.C., March 28, 1,966. Representative L. MENDEL RIVERS, Chairman, Armed Services Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. DEAR CHAIRMAN RIVERS: No doubt you have noted the recent flurry of news- paper stories about unidentified flying objects (UFO's). I have taken special interest in these accounts because many of the latest reported sightings have been in my home State of Michigan. The Air Force sent a consultant, Astrophysicist Dr. J. Allen Hynek of North- western University, to Michigan to investigate the various reports; and he dis- missed all of them as the product of college student pranks or swamp gas or an impression created by the rising crescent moon and the planet Venus. I do not agree that all of these. reports can be or should be so easily explained away. Because I think there may be substance to some of these reports and because I believe the American people are entitled to a more thorough explanation than has been given them by the Air Force to date, I am proposing that either the Science and Astronautics Committee or the Armed Services Committee of the House sched- ule hearings on the subject of UFO's and invite testimony from both the execu- tive branch of the Government and some of the persons who claim to have seen UFO's. I enclose material which I think will be helpful to you in assessing the ad- visability of an investigation of UFO's. May I first call to your attention a column by Roscoe Drummond, published last Sunday in which Mr. Drummond says,"Maybe all of these reported sightings are whimsical, imaginary or unreal; but we need a more credible and detached appraisal of the evidence than we are getting."
Hearing transcript, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 88 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.