Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum by F. C. Durant reports on the January 1953 meetings of the Office of Scientific Intelligence Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, chaired by Dr. H. P. Robertson. It covers the history of the sessions and the panel members' comments on individual cases, radar interference, instrumentation and an educational program. The panel concluded unanimously that the sightings showed no direct threat to national security. It recommended training and public education to strip UFOs of their special status.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
It was the opinion of Dr. Robertson that the "cancer" problem had been found to be different in nature from the detection and investigation of German V-1 and V-2 guided missiles prior to their operational use in World War II. In this 1943-1944 intelligence operation (CROSSSEM), there was excellent intelligence and by June 1944 there was material evidence of the existence of "hardware" obtained from crashed vehicles in Sweden. This evidence gave the investigating team a basis upon which to operate. The absence of any "hardware" resulting from unexplained U, F, O, sightings leads a "will-of-the wind" nature to the AGIC problem. The results of their investigation, to date, strongly indicate that no evidence of hostile act or danger exists. Furthermore, the current reporting system would have little value in the case of detection of enemy attack by conventional aircraft or guided missiles under such conditions "hardware" would be available almost at once. It was interesting to note that none of the members of the Panel were leath to accept that this earth night be visited by extra-torrestrial intelligent beings of some sort, some day. What they did not find was any evidence that related the objects sighted to space travelers. Mr. Fournot, in his presentation, about 10 has had elicited each of the known and probable causes of nightings leaving him "extra-torrestrial" as the only one remaining in any cases. Fournot's background as an astronautical engineer and technical intelligence
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. 32 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.