Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum to the Director of Central Intelligence, prepared by the Office of Scientific Intelligence in September 1952, asks whether flying saucer reports have national security implications. It reports that the Air Force's small ATIC group had received about 1500 official reports since 1947 and studies them only case by case. It identifies psychological warfare and air defense false alarm risks, notes silence in the Soviet press, and recommends National Security Council involvement, further research and a public information policy.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
(6) Since 1947, AIL 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 25. as 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 partisanship, one in which objectivity had been overridden by numerous sensational writers, and one in which there are pressures for extravagant explanations as well as for overexploitation. 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 Bright 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. GSI 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 definitively 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 be found on the margins or just beyond the frontiers of our present knowledge in the fields of atmospheric, ionospheric, and extraterrestrial phenomena, with the usual 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: (2) Determine the Fields of Fundamental science which must be investigated in order to reach an understanding of the phenomena involved; and (1) Analyze and systematize the factors of information which form the fundamental problem (3) Take recommendations for the initiation of appropriate research. Dr. Julius A. Stratton, Vice President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has indicated to W.I that such a group could be constituted at our Institute. Similarly, Project Lincoln, the Air Force air defense project at ALT, could be charged with these responsibilities
Not linked to a story yet.
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. 5 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.