Documents / FOIA release
This is a CIA letter from Philip G. Strong to Dr. Thornton Page of Wesleyan University's Department of Astronomy, dated January 1960. It acknowledges fourteen freshman essays on flying saucers that Page had sent. Strong's staff, who followed the subject, read the essays and found them interesting and generally good at separating subjective views from objective reporting. He adds that no essentially new substantiating positions came out of the exercise.
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Dr. Thornton Paga Department of Astronomy Wesleyan University Middletown, Connecticut Dear Dr. Page: As Indicated in the letter of 10 December to you from my secretary, the fourteen essays by your freshmen students were passed on to the people in my shop who have been following the subject of flying saucers. I also have gone through some of them rather cursorily. We are not passing on comments on individual essays, but I would like to say that we have found the papers extremely interesting. Most of them reflect a solid intellectual attempt to evaluate the evidence and certainly do great credit to your group. The problem itself apparently remains a very stimulating one and one that is especially suitable for exercising the rational power of minds both young and old. Most of the students have done a good job in separating subjective views from objective reporting. It is interesting that with a fresh and energetic group involved no essentially new substantiating positions emerged from the exercise. It was very good of you to pass these on to us. It has been stimulating to our people to see this harried problem viewed again through new eyes. Kindest regards. Since 1923 Philip G. Strong Enclosure: 14 Essays (w/orig only) Distribution: 2 - fwd 1 - ASD 2 - DAD/C PGS:1H(629 Jan 60)
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 2 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.