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.
6059 of investigating the sightings, and the public. The conclusions reached have been assisted by two more examinations of the files of Project Blue Book, the Air Force name for its study and its verdicts on UFO reports. A main conclusion can be briefly stated. It is that the Air Force is misleading the public by it continuing campaign to produce and maintain belief that all sight- ings can be explained away as misidentifications of familiar objects, such as balloons, stars, and aircraft. The logical assumption, backed by much circumstantial evidence, is that the Air Force is deliberately misleading the public. In this campaign the Air Force, backed by normal public respect for the military and for authoritative statements, and also assisted by the natural human dis- inclination to think uncommonly or to be laughed at, has been largely successful. However, the Air Force success in having the public believe what it wants it to believe respecting UFO's is steadily and conspicuously lessening. More and more skepticism is being voiced in newspapers and by citizens. Another chief conclusion is this: no energetic and thorough effort to investi- gate the unidentified flying object phenomenon is being made by the Air Force or ever has been made by it. And this charge holds true respect any other Gov- ernment agency and respecting what has been termed the Nation's scientific community. Reasons for the persevering Air Force performance are unknown to the public. In the speculation one of the following three reasons is commonly advanced: the Air Force fears national panic if the truth about the UFO's were told; the Air Force feels it is stuck with its story; or the Air Force is silenced by the Central Intelligence Agency. The first alleged reason, however uncomplimentary to the intelligence of our citizens, is one that has been heard at the Capitol off and on for approaching 20 years. Some speculate it may be the reason the Air Force has given to the chair- men of the two congressional space committees in its understood endeavor to hold off a congressional investigation of the UFO subject. What is the truth about the UFO's? It is quite possible that no one on this earth knows. A veteran New England congressional leader, who was in a position to know, told this writer that the Air Force didn't know what they are. Officials of the Central Intelligence Agency ought to know if anyone does, yet a former head ofthe CIA, Adm. R. H. Hillenkootter, affirmed half a dozen years ago that he did not believe in the Air Force explainings-away ; but he did not indicate he thought he thought he knows the truth of the matter. An increasing number of good observers hold that a sizable minority of the sightings—many sightings presumably are misidentifications—represent some- thing new and unknown. A large number of these observers, who include veteran pilots, radar operators, air traffic controllers, teachers, astronomers, and other experts, hold that the unknown UFO's are extraterrestrial. To all this Air Force officials can and do respond that not a single tangible bit of evidence of any such UFO has been found. This is a mighty strong argu- ment, the strongest argument of the so-called explainers -away. Yet to an augmenting number of competent observers the evidence grows stronger that some of the UFO's are real and really unknown. So very many impressive sightings can't be explained away, it is said. "From the United States, from Argentina, Uruguay, Portugal, France, Ant- arctica, and Australia (from four continents) have come the rash of reports ofsightings of unidentified flying objects (UFO's). The sightings have been the most numerous since 1957." So summarized a United Press International dis- patch last August. First and last, few presumably will challenge a conclusion that the mystery and the problem of the unidentified flying object remain with this world. And as for the Air Force, with its intensive campaign to explain away every UFO sighting, it might listen to the recent advice of a veteran astronomer, Dr. I. M. Levitt, director of the Fels Planetarium, Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, said: "It would be well if our Project Blue Book officials were simply to indicate that sightings in a minority of cases cannot be explained. It would clear the air of a great deal of misunderstanding and mistrust of this group by the intelligent laymen and observers who have seen objects in the sky."
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.