Documents / FOIA release
This is a CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence file from December 1952 on unidentified flying objects. It includes memoranda to the Director of Central Intelligence from Assistant Director H. Marshall Chadwell, a letter from Thornton Page to H. P. Robertson, and F. C. Durant's note of a call with Captain Edward Ruppelt. The file says there is still no reasonable evidence that the objects are of foreign origin. It plans a small consultant panel and reviews the Tremonton film, the Presque Isle and Limestone lights, and the Florida scoutmaster case.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
MEMORANDUM FOR: The Director of Central Intelligence THROUGH: Deputy Director (Intelligence) SUBJECT: Unidentified Flying Objects EFLES: (a) Request of the Director of 10 December 1952 (b) Note from A0/62 to Director dated 10 December 1952 1. Pursuant to the request of the Director, the following amplification of Reference (b) and review of the current situation is submitted. A preliminary review of the USAF investigation of this subject has been completed. With respect to the recent incidents enumerated in Reference (b), additional information has been obtained which is appended as Tab A. 2. A trip to Air Technical Intelligence Center was made on Friday, 12 December by AD/SI, Dr. H. P. Robertson (consultant), and F. C. Durant (Operations Staff/SI). During this visit the 0/SI group was briefed on the current status of the investigation, and copies of selected case studies and progress reports were obtained. This material has been subsequently studied in detail. 3. There still exists no reasonable evidence that the objects sighted are of foreign origin. While there is no indication that these objects represent a direct threat to the national defence, there are certain potential dangers which are related to these sightings. As a result of the trip and these conclusions, 0/31 is proceeding with plans to convene a group (probably not more than three), of top level consultants in the fields of physics (redar and upper atmosphere), astrophysics and astronomy, to review the evidence and recommend with respect to: a. Methodology of investigation of unidentified flying objects. b. Instrumentation to obtain data in future migrations. c. Methods of rapid identification of unidentified flying objects. c. Desirability for convening of a larger panel. We are deferring for the present the convening of a large panel of diverse scientific interests for a detailed review of the substantive aspects of the problem because of insufficient and incomplete data.
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. 9 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.