Documents / FOIA release
This is a Central Intelligence Agency cover letter dated December 20, 1957, from Philip C. Strong, Deputy Assistant Director, to Dr. Samuel Goudsmit of Brookhaven National Laboratories. It encloses a copy of a letter to the Air Force and the declassified version of the scientific Panel Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. The enclosed report concludes that the phenomena pose no direct physical threat to national security. It recommends stripping them of their special status and aura of mystery through an integrated public education program.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
1. The undermined Panel of Scientific Consultants has met at the request of the Government to evaluate any possible threat to national security posed by Unidentified Flying Objects ("Flying Creators"), and to make recommendation. The Panel has received the evidence as presented by competent Governmental agencies, primarily the United States Air Force, and has reviewed a selection of the best documented incidents.
2. As a result of its considerations, the Panel concludes:
above no indication that these phenomena constitute a direct physical threat to national security.
No firmly believe that there is no residuum of cases which indicates phenomena which are attributable to foreign artifacts capable of hortile acts, and that there is no evidence that the phenomena indicate a need for the revision of current scientific concepts.
3. In the light of this conclusion, the Panel recommends:
That the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the unidentified flying objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired. 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.