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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6056 group, who went to the scene to investigate for NICAP. The latter stands for National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, the unofficial but re- sponsible Washington organization. The Fowler charges are in the files of Blue Book and of NICAP. Fowler talked with witnesses and others and said he was told that Pease AFB officers had asked the police and a local newspaper correspondent not to mention the sightings. The request was put to the police on the ground people would be alarmed if told the facts, it is stated. Major Quintanilla, informed of this charge, said that "I would not allow any suppression of news." However, it is an impression in Washington that officers a good deal higher than Major Quintanilla would not exert themselves to prevent news suppression of UFO sightings. The Haverhill (Mass.) Gazette wrote an editorial on this UFO in the neigh- borhood, in which it said: "So many have reported seeing it (the Exeter UFO) and their descriptions jibe so closely that, unless they have banded together in one large hoax, their stories must be given credence." [From the Portland (Maine) Evening Express, Jan. 20, 19661 THOSE "FLYING SAUCERS"—AIR FORCE BRUSHES OFF FLOOD OF SIGHTINGS IN SOUTHWEST (Editor's note: This is the fourth of a series about UFO's (unidentified flying objects) by Bulkley S. Griffin, executive editor of the Evening Express, Wash- ington bureau.) WASHINGTON, D.C.—A good 2 weeks after the flood of unidentified flying object (UFO) sightings last August over Oklahoma and other Southwestern States, Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma City, produced its formal survey and judg- ment. It sent this several -page explanation of sightings in its wide area to Project Blue Book, the Air Force office in charge of the UFO investigations and conclusions. This report is a good example of Air Force anti -UFO propaganda. Except for mention of one specific sighting—which was decreed to be a weather baloon— the report is generalized, pulling out all the stops on the possibilities of citizens making mistakes and including a statement from the official of a planetarium in Oklahoma City whose text was that "the average person is uneducated as to what the sky normally looks like." Interviews with military experts are given which mention unusually brightstars at this time of year, a haze that reflects things from the ground, the fre- quency of weather balloons and so on. An impressive but superficial case is made for weather balloons as fooling people into thinking they are seeing a UFO. The number released daily in the Oklahoma area is considerable. But the fact is that the citizens thereabouts have lived with these balloons day after day and year after year and by now must be fairly well acquainted with what they look like and how they act. They are also pretty well acquainted with stars, which at the moment may be supplanting balloons as the favorite explanation put forth by Project Blue Book. The Tinker AFB report did not need to avoid mention of particular sightings. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol teletype reported a number of sightings well worth investigation and these teletype UFO reports were relayed to all major news- papers, wire services and TV and radio stations across the State of Oklahoma; also to the weather wire teletype system. They were available to sincere Air Force investigators. The failure to interview witnesses could be termed negative Air Force prop- aganda. The highway patrol messages named close to a dozen civilian wit- nesses usually with addresses, and the number of highway patrol officers that had sightings must have totaled two dozen and more. Yet the formal August 20 re- port from Tinker shows interviews with but two civilians and two police officers. Maj. Hector Quintanilla, in command of Project Blue Book, says the Air Force seeks interviews With persons who call up and whose names they learn. "We are not interested in persons who go to the newspapers or to radio and TV stations," he said. The wisdom of this exclusion is of course wide open to ques- tion—assuming that the Air Force is seeking information.
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.