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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6057 But Tinker AFB itself must have received dozens of calls during the heavy sighting period of July 31 through August 5. This much is indicated by n sentence sent out over the highway patrol network the night of August 2. "The security officer at Tinker Field reports he has been swamped with calls the past hour from people reporting UFO's." This report refers to just 1 hour of the several -day sighting period. Chances are, it is said, that the Air Force handling of the UFO problem may be allowed to drag along by an apathetic public. Yet one may speculate on what an honest and energetic investigation might do. For one thing, it would investigate some of the sightings reported by the Oklahoma highway patrol. For instance, take this report that moved with many others, over the teletype August 4. "Twenty-five people at a church in Cushing, Okla., all watched several UFO's. Sometimes they would stay stationary, then would move at a high rate of speed. Were moving south for a while, then stopped and stood still for some time, then were joined by two and moved to the west at highspeeds, then turned and traveled east for a while, then stopped completely and stood still, then went east and suddenly disappeared from sight. The first ones were orange lights, the ones that joined them had red and green lights like airplanes. PD (police department) Cushing also observed the same things." Or the "approximately 30 calls" to the Shawnee Police Department reporting 4 or 5 lighted objects traveling northwest which "make no conventional noise such as an aircraft does but rather make a humming noise." Or what did the five citizens of Norman, Okla., see looking at a white globe 30-4()feet in diameter through a "tripod -mounted 160 -power telescope." The evidence is convincing that the Air Force—for reasons it doesn't an- nounce—is not really trying to discover what the UFO's are. Or, if the Air Force already knows, it is painstakingly keeping its information from the public. Chief blame for this lack of action must rest on the Government. But another culprit, the scientific community, must bear blame according to an August article by Robert C. Cowen, natural science editor of the Christian Science Monitor. He wrote in part: "The main reason there has been no scientific study of the (UFO) puzzle issocial pressure within the scientific community. It has not been due to lack of opportunity to gather data. "Many scientists feel the whole subject is 'kooky.' They dismiss it with ridicule. It can be personally embarrassing, even detrimental to a scientist's career, to try to take the saucer problem seriously." It is time to investigate; scientific knowledge of some sort resides in the UFO phenomenon, said the writer. [From the Portland (Maine) Evening Express, Jan. 21, 1966] THOSE "FLYING SAUCERS"—WHAT SHERIFFS SAW WASN'T STAR, UFO PROBER ADMITS (Editor's note: This is the fifth 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.—The case of the two Texas deputy sheriffs whose patrol car was allegedly followed by an unidentified flying object (UFO) so that they hit 110 miles an hour in rushing away, is worth mentioning for its own sake in any study of the Air Force -UFO confrontation. The case also illustrates the possibility of a more realistic trend in Project Blue Book—which is the name of the Air Force's investigation of UFO's. Project Blue Book first listed the Texas sighting as, "Refraction of Star Antares distorted due to inversion." This verdict was a highly improbable one from the start, as will be seen from the testimony of the two deputy sheriffs. Recently, Maj. Hector Quintanilla, in command of Project Blue Book, stated he has withdrawn this conclusion after talking over the phone with Deputy Sheriff McCoy. The star verdict didn't seem to fit. So Blue Book now records the sight- ing as one of the very few unexplained ones on its rolls. Another recent case of reconsideration of a verdict occurred in the instance of the four lighted objects seen together by many observers the night of August 1-2, according to the teletype reports of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. The latter
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.