Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency memo records the January 14 to 17, 1953 meeting of an ad hoc panel of scientific consultants, chaired by Dr. Robertson and including Alvarez, Goudsmit, Page and Hynek, convened to review the UFO problem. It lists the OSI staff and Air Force and Navy personnel present. The stated conclusions are that there was no evidence of a physical threat or of unknown scientific principles, and that UFOs were not of direct intelligence interest. They were of operational interest because of risks to air defense and of enemy psychological warfare.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
At 0945 on January 14, 1953, an ad hoc panel of scientific consultants was convened to review the "Unidentified Flying Objects" problem. A detailed statement of the problem presented to the group by CIA is attached as Appendix A. The panel consisted of the following: Dr. Robertson, .CIT Dr. Luis-Alvarez Dr. S. Gondsmit, Brookhaven Dr. Thornton Page, ORD Johns Hopkins Dr. J.A. Hynek, consultant to ATIC. The following members of the staff of OSI were present for various parts of the discussions. Dr. H.M. Chadwell R. L. Clark P.G. Strong F.C. Durant III Lt. Col. Oler (P&E) D.B. Stevenson (Weapons) To assist the scientific panel in its review and analysis of evidence Capt. E. J. Rippelt of ATIC, Lt. Neashan and Mr. H. Woo of the Navy photo interpretation lab at Anacostis and Major Fournet and Capt. Smith of Air Force Directorate of Intelligence were present. A final report on the results of the meeting is being prepared for the AD/SI by F.C. Durant out it is believed that the following is a fair statement of the conclusions reached: 1. No evidence is available to indicate any physical threat to the security of the United States. 2. No evidence is available to indicate the existence or use of any as yet unknown (to us) fundamental scientific principles. 3. The subject "UFO" is not of direct intelligence interest. It is of indirect intelligence interest only insofar as any knowledge about the innumerable unsolved mysteries of the universe are of intelligence interest. 4. The subject "UFO" is of operational interest for three reasons: (a) Interference with air defense by intentional enemy jamming or by lack of ability on the part of operating personnel to discriminate between radar anomalies and actual airborne weapons (b) Related to (a), interference with air defense by overloading communication lines from the air defense observation stations. (c) Possibility of a psychological offensive by the enemy timed with respect to an actual attack could conceivably seriously
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. 3 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.