Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum, typed 12 February 1953, records the meeting of an ad hoc panel of scientific consultants convened on January 14, 1953 to review the UFO problem. It lists the panel, including Dr. Robertson, Dr. Luis Alvarez, Dr. S. Goudsmit, Dr. Thornton Page and Dr. J.A. Hynek, along with the OSI staff and Air Force and Navy advisers who attended. The panel concluded that UFOs posed no physical threat to US security and showed no evidence of unknown scientific principles. They were of operational interest only because of risks to air defense and possible enemy psychological warfare.
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At 0945 on January 14, 1953, an ad hoc panel of scientific consultants convened to review the "Unidentified Flying Objects" problem. A detailed statement of the problem presented to the group by CIA is attached as Appendix A. The panel consisted of the following: Dr. Robertson, .CIT Dr. Luis-Alvarez Dr. S. Gondsmit, Brookhaven Dr. Thornton Page, ORJ Johns Hopkins Dr. J.A. Hynek, consultant to ATIC. The following members of the staff of OSI were present for various parts of the discussions. Dr. H.M. Chadwell R.L. Clark P.G. Strong Lt. Col. Oler (P&E) D.B. Stevenson (Weapons) To assist the scientific panel in its review and analysis of evidence Capt. E. J. Ruppelt of ATIC, Lt. Neashan and Mr. H. Woo of the Navy photo interpretation lab at Anacostian and Major Fournet and Capt. Smith of Air Force Directorate of Intelligence were present. A final report on the results of the meeting is being prepared for the AD/SI by F.C. Durant but it is believed that the following is a fair statement of the conclusions reached: 1. No evidence is available to indicate any physical threat to the security of the United States. 2. No evidence is available to indicate the existence or use of any as yet unknown (to us) fundamental scientific principles. 3. The subject "UFO" is not of direct intelligence interest. It is of indirect intelligence interest only insofar as any knowledge about the innumerable unsolved mysteries of the universe are of intelligence interest. 4. The subject "UFO" is of operational interest for three reasons: (a) Interference with air defense by intentional enemy farming or by lack of ability on the part of operating personnel to discriminate between radar anomalies and actual airborne weapons (b) Related to (a), interference with air defense by overloading communication lines from the air defense observation stations. (c) Possibility of a psychological offensive by the enemy timed with respect to an actual attack could conceivably seriously
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.