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
6051 that of a football. This was roughly the same description given by a man and his son who reported that they saw an eerie object land in a swamp Sunday night 45 miles northeast of here near Ann Arbor. The Air Force announced it was bringing in Dr. H. Allen Hynek, chairman of Dearborn Observatory at Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill., and scientific consultant to the Air Force's Project Blue Book program to track down the reports of unidentified flying objects. Dr. Hynek set up his headquarters at Selfridge Air Force Base, Mount Clemens, Mich., near the southern Michigan section where the objects have been reported several times lately. "It was definitely some kind of vehicle," Mr. Van Horn said. "Through the glasses [binoculars] it was either round or long." The object's shape was briefly outlined by lightning as it veered over and near the dormitory before retreating into the swamp, Miss Kohn said. It stayed there for 4 hours before vanishing, witnesses said. [From the Washington Post, Mar. 29, 1966] TRUTH ABOUT FLYING OBJECTS HIDDEN BY AIR FORCE, FAITHFUL SAY (By Howard Simons, Washington Post Staff Writer) Firm believers that unidentified flying objects are for real and from a far-off super -civilization met the press yesterday amid a torrent of reports about new objects being sighted everywhere in the United States. The believers repeatedly charged the Air Force with deliberately hiding the truth, which if it were known "would bring forth one of the greatest stories of the century." The believers also "fully backed" Representative Gerald Ford, Republican, of Michigan, who wants a congressional investigation of unidentified objects which have lately plagued his home State. But most of all, the believers want to be believed and loved. "We want the Air Force merely to end its secrecy on sightings and stop ridi- culing competent witnesses," said retired Marine Corps Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe, a UFO skeptic until his conversion. Keyhoe now is director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, an organization whose major aims are to evaluate all UFO sightings; get the Air Force to own up to the truth and to expose UFO charlatans who keep seeing "little green men." Keyhoe and his colleagues, including scientists, engineers, military personnel, and pilots, scorn the thought of "little green men." Had a visitor from afar ever set foot on the earth? the serious students of UFO's were asked. There was only one ease suggesting so, said committee staff member andformer Newsman Donald Berliner. It happened in April 1964 near Socorro, N. Mex., where police officers saw two small suited occupants get out of a UFO. "They were small and suited," noted a reporter. "How could you be surethey were not green?" "We have no reason to believe they were green," wryly quipped Berliner. The committee's case for believing that UFO's are for real was put to the press by Keyhoe. It amounted to an argument that thousands of competent persons— including radar controllers, qualified pilots, and missile trackers—had sighted objects; roughly 100.000 persons in all. The Air Force, which has been investigating UFO reports since 1948, has steadfastly maintained there is no evidence any flying object has come from somewhere else in the universe. Keyhoe's view, shared by the committee's board of governors, is radically dif- ferent. The committee concludes, Keyhoe said yesterday, that "these things are real and must be extraterrestrial because they are so superior to anything we have." According to Keyhoe. UFO's have been observing the earth for 200 years. He gave two reasons, essentially, for why no contact has been made with whoever it is that pilots the UFO's. One reason is that the Air Force has orders to genre the UFO's away. A second reason is that until humans demonstrated the atomic bomb and spaceflight the UFO people regarded earth as too primitive a society to bother with other than for surveillance purposes.
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.