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.
“County deputy sheriff”3 pages
6048 The Air Force totals 10,147 UFO reports and states that 646 of them remain unexplained by provable natural phenomena. 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. Maybe there is no intelligent life on other planets. Many scientists think otherplanets could not sustain such life. But we don't really know. One fact about the UFO's gives me pause. There have been no really solid reports of creatures being seen getting off landed saucers. To venture from one planet to another involves great intellectual curiosity and I would think it almost impossible for someone from outer space, once here, to stifle that curiosity to the extent of not trying to make personal contact with Earth people. Conceivably, we have been seeing only preliminary unmanned orbitings of the Earth precisely controlled at great distances. But we don't know. We need to get all the data drawn together in one place and examined far more objectively than anyone has done so far. A stable public opinion will come from a trustworthy look at the evidence, not from belittling it. [From the Washington Evening Star, Mar. 25, 1966] DEPUTY SHERIFF "SHOOTS" A UFO OVER MICHIGAN ANN ARBOR, MICH.—A Michigan deputy sheriff said an unidentified flying object sighted over southern Michigan last week was trapped—on film—and still another UFO was reported yesterday. Deputy Sheriff David Fitzpatrick of Washtenaw (Ann Arbor) County took the photographs with a tiny camera roughly the size of a man's two forefingers held together. Prints were delayed because the tiny film had to be sent to Forest Hills, N.Y.. for development. The new sighting of an unidentified flying object near Holland, Mich., came from both Mr. and Mrs. Robert Nichols, who live across Michigan's southern Lower Peninsula near Saugatuck. They said it flew across a highway ahead of them, no more than 150 to 200 feet high. Nichols, 24, said the object appeared about half the size of an automobile and was "a round circle glowing red on the inside and white on the outside." Nichols' description fits roughly that given by several of more than a score who have reported sightings in the Ann Arbor area in the last 10 days. Fitzpatrick, however, said the two objects he photographed gave off a bril- liant yellow -white light in graceful swoops which he and Sheriff's Sgt. N. K. Schneider observed from about 4 a.m. to 7 a.m., March 16. The photographs show two distinct Streaks of light in the sky high above street lights leading into Milan. No details of the objects are visible in the photographs blow up to 8 by 10 inches from the tiny film. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a Northwestern University astrophysicist, was sent here bythe Air Force to investigate recent reports. He has scheduled a news conference in Detroit today to discuss his probe. Meanwhile, reports of unidentified flying objects moved south into Ohio today. A farmer who lives near Upper Sandusky in northwestern Ohio told sheriff's deputies that an object shaped "like a top" or a "Christmas tree upside down" hovered over a wooded area on his property early today. Deputies were called to the farm three times, but the farmer said the object, with lights on its outer edges, disappeared each time before they arrived. [From the Detroit News, Mar. 23, 1966] PHOTO ADDS NEW WRINKLE TO SAUCERS (By Douglas Bradford) While Air Force officials prowled through the countryside for some sign of the strange night visitors that have been zipping through southeastern Michiganskies, a Monroe area boy came up with what he said was a picture of one.
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.