Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency document, dated 3 January 1953, records the comments and suggestions of the Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, which met 14 to 17 January 1953. The panel reviewed case histories including Tremonton, Great Falls, Washington and Haneda and concluded that it found no evidence of a direct threat to national security or of extraterrestrial origin. It rejected the Navy's analysis of the Tremonton film and recommended an educational program of training and debunking, supported by ATIC.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
The Panel believed strongly that the data available on this sighting was sufficient for positive identification if further data is obtained by photographing polyethylene "pillow" balloons released near the site under similar weather conditions, checking bird flight and reflection characteristics with competent ornithologists and calculating apparent "G" forces acting upon objects from their apparent tracks. It was concluded that the results of such tests would probably lead to creditable explanations of value in an educational or training program. However, the Panel noted that the cost in technical manpower effort required to follow up and explain every one of the thousand or more reports received through channels each year (1,900 in 1952) could not be justified. It was felt that there will always be sightings, for which complete data is lacking, that can only be explained with disproportionate effort and with a long time delay, if at all. The long delay in explaining a sighting tends to eliminate any intelligence value. The educational or training program should have as a major purpose the elimination of popular feeling that every sighting, no matter how poor the data, must be explained in detail. Attention should be directed to the requirement among scientists that a new phenomena, to be accepted, must be completely and convincingly documented.
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. 22 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.