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.
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6049 Paul Richwine, 16, who lives in Woodland Beach, 3 miles north of Monroe, produced a piece of film with a blob on it that he says his camera "saw" when he pointed it at a "flying saucer" over his home Friday night. Detroit News photographers say the blob could be due to a wrinkle in the film. But Paul and his mother, Mrs. Mariannice Richwine, insist that they saw the strange glowing objects cavorting in the sky and that the dark area on the picture represents one of them. The object in the picture doesn't seem to have much material substance. Neither Paul nor his mother can account for the fact that the thing they saw was bright and shiny with flashing colored lights while the camera recorded a dark smear. Paul said his Argus F-100 was on time exposure at f. 2.8 and was loaded with fast film when he took the picture at about 11 :30 p.m., Friday. The News photographers conceded that the darkness in the picture "might" be the indication of something moving quite swiftly on a time exposure, or the blob could be a water spot on the negative or a wrinkle in the film. Mrs. Richwine said the object's appearance was preceded by four glowing shapes about 10:30 p.m., Friday. She saw them from her front window, she said. [From the Grand Rapids (Mich.) Press, Mar. 22, 1966]STATE FLYING OBJECT REPORTS BRING PLEA FOR FEDERAL SIFT ANN ARBOR.—A Michigan Congressman planned Tuesday to ask the Defense Department to investigate reports of unidentified flying objects sighted near Ann Arbor.U.S. Representative Weston Vivian, Democrat, of Michigan, left for Washing- ton, D.C., Monday after conferring with Sheriff Douglas J. Harvey, of Washte- naw County. Harvey said Vivian also planned to talk with the U.S. Air Force. Three times within a week, residents of the nearby community of Dexter have reported sighting objects flying in the night sky. "I didn't believe those reports," said Harvey. "But with so many trained police personnel and reliable citizens having seen them, I must believe some- thing is in the Washtenaw County skies." And Tuesday, the Hillsdale County civil defense director and 87 college coeds said they watched an eerie, hovering flying object settle in a swampy hollow near a school dormitory Monday night. William VanHorn, 41, the county civil defense director for 10 years, said hewatched the unidentified object through binoculars for 3 hours. The Air Force announced it was calling in Dr. H. Allen Hynek, chairman of the Dearborn Observatory at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., and scien- tific consultant to the Air Force's UFO study program, to investigate the rash of sightings. Hynek will work from Selfridge Air Force Base near Mount Clements, the Air Force said. In Hillsdale, VanHorn said he joined the 87 Hillsdale College coeds and their housemother to watch the object. He said it emitted wavering orange, red * * *. [From the New York Times, Mar. 22, 1966] FORTY IN MICHIGAN SAY A MYSTERIOUS CRAFT HOVERED IN SWAMP ANN ARBOR, Mimi., March 21.—At least 40 persons, including 12 policemen,said today that they saw a strange flying object guarded by four sister ships land in a swamp near here Sunday night. Descriptions of the unidentified flying objects tallied closely. A patrolman, Robert Hunawill, said he and other residents of the area saw similar craft before dawn last Monday and Wednesday. In Washington, the Air Force said it knew nothing of the reports. The AirForce's Michigan headquarters in Battle Creek would not comment. Two persons who slogged through the 300 -acre swamp today and looked for traces of the craft found nothing but marsh grass, quicksand, and muck.
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.