Scientists Debate the Question of UFO's

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read it before you leave, I hope that all of you will take it, either to read on the airplane or to carry it home to read and then pass on to your scientific editors or aeronautical editors or what have you. The paper goes into considerable detail and explains my point of view.

I think the problem has been superficially and incompetently handled by the Air Force. I have said that in many open discussions. I have said it to Air Force generals this week. I said it to Air Force generals months ago. And I say it again.

cerned with the clogging of intelligence channels.

The history of the problem, as Maj. Quintanilla (Maj. Hector Quintanilla Jr., chief of Project Blue Book and also a convention speaker) indicated, began in 1947. The pivot point in the history of the UFO's was the Robertson Panel of 1953 five well-known scientists assembled by the Air Force and CIA to have a look at the problem. The security agency's concern that led to formation of the group grew out of the heavy wave of reports of 1952, not exceeded even by last year's 1,000 reports.

I was startled when I went into Maj. Quintanilla's office and saw five feet of shelving just devoted to the 1952 waves of sightings. There were so many cases that the

good men all spent two days together, and two days is just not enough to look at this problem. They ruled that there was no evidence for existence of any "artifacts of a hostile foreign power" and suggested that an educational program be launched. This was never done. It would have been a good thing.

Their fourth recommendation came after strong interaction with the CIA representatives at the final session. (I am in the peculiar position of being almost the only one outside official Air Force channels who has seen this document. Maj. Quintanilla gave it to me and I made extensive notes from it. When I asked for a copy on a subsequent visit, things happened, and it has been reclassified by the CIA. I made no comments about this for several months. It was fully clear to all the personnel at Blue Book and in the Foreign Technology Division that I had all these notes. I have no hesitation now to discuss it in full . . .)

The fourth recommendation asked for a systematic "debunking of the flying saucers." The stated objective of the "debunking" was to "reduce public interest in flying saucers."

## No Deception

I wish to make it very clear that I do not regard this as a dark and sinister action of a covert body trying to deceive the citizenry. They wanted to get the "noise" out of the "signals" that were clogging the intelligence channels. Hence, viewed narrowly from security viewpoints, it made good sense to get this "noise" suppressed. But it was a scientific tragedy that at that time this problem was not turned over, in the face of nonhostility, to scientific groups. It was not. It

stayed in the Air Force; and gradually, as near as I can Balderdash, Rot

stayed in the Air Force; and, gradually, as near as I can see, it has been downgraded to an extremely low priority project which, when I was there first, involved the major, a sergeant and a secretary.

Now Maj. Quintanilla has indicated that the Air Force draws on other sources of expertise. And when we read the press releases from the Pentagon desk, we do indeed get the impression that Air Force expertise, which is not zero by any means, has been used.

My examination of the problem strongly indicates that the Air Force expertise has had very little to do with Project Blue Book, and that this is the heart of the trouble. For instance, in the case of radar, I talked not very many days ago to the Air Force's best radar propagation man, Dr. David Atlas, who indicated to me he had never been brought into any discussions of propagation anomalies or anything like that in all his years at the Air Force Cambridge Research Lab. And I could go on to illustrate examples of that sort.

The question of what the UFO's are is crucial when you look at sightings such as Mr. Powell and Miss McClave talked about and when you realize, as I now do but did not 12 months ago that these are not unrepresentative sightings. The close-range sightings of disks and cigar-shaped objects frequently seen at tens of feet in populous areas are on the increase. There are credible observers, multiple witnesses. A case in Beverly, Mass., where five adults two of them police officers were within 20 feet of an object that was right over the middle of the street. In the back of my paper are 18 cases out of thousands. And this particular case of last spring is cited.

That sort of thing and Powell's observation are representative of the interesting sightings. They are not confined to the United States. One finds this going on all over the world. I can vouch only for the American reports that I have checked, and

Book tells you and me, as we just heard a moment ago, that there is nothing in the unidentified flying objects that defies present-day explanation in terms of science and technology, that's balderdash; it is utter rot, I assure you. How would you explain the kind of a dome-shaped object that Mr. Powell

saw? Well, if it was the only one you ever heard of, you would forget about it. But look at the unidentified cases: Exeter, N. H.; Damon, Tex.; Port Huron, Mich. Look at the sightings only a couple of months ago in Davis, Calif. Look at the cases that simply fit no conventional, no scientific, no known explanation.

Something is going on here of the greatest scientific interest that has been shoved under a rug, ridiculed and laughed out of court. You and your feature writers have helped ridicule it. It's easier to write a funny story. And once the Air Force tells you there is nothing to it, what is more logical than to say, "People see things; there are a lot of nuts around the country?" And that has led to the net effect that very few of these are reported.

For example, Mr. Powell's report never got on the wires He told me he called the Naval Air Station at Willow Grove after a day's deliberation, and they weren't very interested; and he didn't go any further with it.

The number of embittered citizens who have been hurt by Air Force callous rejection and discrediting, saying they saw twinkling stars and so on, is very large and I have had firsthand contact with many of them. As a citizen I am a little disgruntled at this kind of treatment. If there were some reason for it, if there were a national security reason - but it's just incompetence in operation.

It has led to a lot of serious students of the problem to speculate that there might be some conspiracy. And I have

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