Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum to the Director of Central Intelligence, from H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence, was prepared in September 1952. It reviews the Air Force study of flying saucer reports at the Air Technical Intelligence Center, which had received about 1,500 official reports since 1947. It finds that the sightings carry national security implications, both psychological and for air defense. It recommends action by the National Security Council, new research and a public information policy that would minimize the risk of panic.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
(6) Since 1947, AIC has received approximately 1500 official reports of sightings plus an enormous volume of letters, phone calls and press reports. During the north of July 1952 alone, official reports totaled 250. Of the 1500 reports, Air Force carries 20, an unexplained and of those received January through July 1952 it carries 20, unexplained. ## 3. DISCUSSION a. CSI entered into its inquiry fully aware that it was coming into a field already charged with participability, one in which objectivity had been overridden by numerous sensational writers, and one in which there are pressures for extravagant explanations as for oversimplification. The CSI team consulted with a representative of Air Force Special Studies Group; discussed the problem with those in charge of the Air Force Project at Wright field; reviewed a considerable volume of intelligence reports; checked the Soviet press and broadcast indices; and conferred with three CSI consultants, all leaders in their scientific fields, who were chosen because of their broad knowledge of the technical areas concerned. b. CSI found that the ATIC study is probably valid if the purpose is limited to a case-by-case explanation. However, the study makes no attempt to solve the more fundamental aspect of the problem which is to determine definitely the nature of the various phenomena which are causing these sightings, or to discover means by which these causes and their visual or electronic effects may be immediately identified. Our consultant panel stated that those solutions would probably to found on the margins or just beyond the frontiers of our present knowledge in the fields of atmospheric, ionospheric, and extraterrestrial phenomena, with the added possibility that our present dispersal of nuclear waste products might also be a factor. They recommended that a study group be formed to perform three functions: (1) Analyse and systematise the factors of information which form the fundamental problem (2) Determine the fields of fundamental science which must be investigated in order to reach an understanding of the pho- neom involved; and (3) Take recommendations for the initiation of appropriate research. Dr. Julius A. Stratton, Vice President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has indicated to CFI that such a group could be constituted at that Institute. Similarly, Project Lincoln, the Air Force air defense project at AIF, could be carried with these responsibilities.
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. 6 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.