Documents / FOIA release
This December 17, 1953 Central Intelligence Agency memorandum was written by the Chief of the Physics and Electronics Division, Office of Scientific Intelligence, for the Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence. It reviews the status of the agency's UFOB project, which was limited to tracking other agencies and keeping files. It describes the Air Force's shrinking Project Bluebook, its planned move to Air Defense Command, a camera program and the Project STORK statistical study. It also notes minimal Navy and Army interest and the results of the January 1953 panel recommendations.
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investigative work of the project and "if it turns out that these things (UFOB's) are space ships or long range aircraft from another country, ADC is the (Air Force) Command that would have to take action." Col. Johnston followed this concept with the so-called contradictory statement that the project transfer did not reflect any change in Air Force policy. It is undoubtedly true that ADC is the Air Force Command primarily concerned with UFOB's at the present time in that their interceptors are occasionally dispatched "against" reported UFOB's and that their reporting stations and communications systems are involved in a considerable portion of the UFOB activity. ATIC will maintain liaison with the project. Approximately a year and one half ago ATIC initiated a program to purchase cameras for selected AEC radar sites and AACS control towers in locations where consistent UFOB reports were received in the hopes of photographing UFOB's. One lens of the camera (a stereoscopic type) was to be covered with a simple grating to record the spectrographic nature of the UFOB photographed. One hundred "Video" 35 mm. cameras with "stereon" anastigmat f 3.5 lenses were purchased along with 100 gratings (15,000 line) from CEECO, Chicago. Seventy-four (74) cameras were distributed. Ninety percent of the gratings have "gone bad"--the actual grating separating from the plastic mounting plates. New gratings are expected shortly and ATIC expects to recall all of the 74 distributed cameras and re-equip them with the new gratings. Several months ago we were advised that ATIC planned to set up a concentrated instrumentation observational effort in the Albuquerque area. This has now been dropped. Project STORK (SECRET) has been preparing at ATIC request, a comprehensive statistical report on UFGB sightings during the period 1947 through 1952. This study is now expected to be completed by 15 December 1953. ATIC issuance status reports on Project Bluebook on a tri-monthly basis the most recent being Report No. 12 30 September 1953. b. Navy. The Navy in spite of press reports to the contrary, is presently devoting only part of one CNI analyst's time to maintaining cognizance of UFCB's. c. Army. The Army has evidenced little or no interest in UFO's other than cooperating with the Air Force in reporting sightings and pertinent data using the Air Force format. 4. Investitrations or Interests of Foreign Governments.
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.