Scientists Debate the Question of UFO's

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

given that very careful thought for a number of reasons. The group at MIGAP here in Washington has had much more contact with this problem than either the Air Force or I, and they have again and again encountered cases where it looked to them as if there must be some really high-level conspiracy.

People have suggested that maybe Blue Book is only a front organization and doesn't know that it's only a front organization. Well, I can't begin to tell you the sources that I have checked on this. But I do not think it is a grand coverup. It is a grand foulup, a foulup of incredible proportions, unprecedented in my experience.

There have been scientists who have looked at the problem not very many. Dr. Menzel is one. I cannot agree with the optical-physical-astronomical principles the arguments that Dr. Menzel uses.

## Plasma Phenomena

Another person who has recently looked at the problem is Philip Klass, who has thought that these, perhaps, are plasma phenomena. That is a reasonable thing to have a look at, and I have had a look at it. I can't agree with Philip Klass that any substantial portion of the cases can be accounted for in terms of plasma phenomena associated with corona discharges on power lines or balls of lightning. In the best labs in the country it is the biggest problem in fusion research to get plasma lifetimes of more than seconds. But how did Mr. Powell see this plasma coming along at him from ahead and watch it for tens of seconds? How did two California Highway Patrolmen at Red Bluff, Calif., stand about 150-200 feet from a 100-foot-long object that had great big bright blinking lights on it, that maneuvered up and down and led them a chase of about 70 minutes? How did the Portage County, Ohio, sheriff's deputies last spring follow for an hour and a half a plasma or a twinkling star or, as Maj. Quintanilla

SEP 6 1967

has said, a combination of Echo and Venus an explanatory that is unclear surd? And it still stands as the official explanation. Congressman Stanton (Rep. John W. Stanton, R-Ohio) has been told that a reinvestigation confirms that. That too is utter rot.

I tell you that this sort of thing has to stop. And you

editors are in an excellent position to help stop this by pressing for what I am afraid, at this juncture, may be the only way to escalate serious scientific concern, and that is to ask for a full and fair congressional inquiry into the past 20 years of mishandling of this extremely important problem.

The scientist doesn't usually like to pursue these kinds of routes. I don't. You often get not only less than you hoped for but you also lose scientific progress. We must have a hearing that is not like the one last spring which was called by Congressman Ford (Rep. Gerald R. Ford R-Mich.) as a result of constituents' concern over Air Force handling of the Michigan cases that were explained in terms of swamp gas. No single explanation has brought the Air Force more ridicule. The swamp gas theory is nonsense. And it still stands as the explanation. This is the explanation that came directly from Dr. Hynek, and Maj. Quintanilla has assured me that it is Hynek, not him, with whom I must have any discussions. And I have, but the explanation has not been retracted.

(Editor's note: Dr. J. Allen Hynek of Northwestern University is the Air Force consultant on UFO's.)

When Ford got an investigation, who conducted it? The Armed Services Committee. Who testified? Three Air Force-related people, period. That we can't have. We must have what NICAP, for example, has been pleading for for years.

## The Best Source

If you want to get the single best source of information about the whole UFO problem, I refer you to a

Approved Release 2003/11/04 "The UFO Evidence." It

comes to mind at the moment because it contains a

cessful attempts to persuade congressmen - they were almost successful several times - to launch an investigation. And this, as I've said, is needed. We scientists have been assured for so long there is nothing to it. As I have gone around the country and I suppose I have talked to 15 scientific groups, including Rand, the University of Washington, my colleagues in the American Meteorological Society - over and over again I have encountered the conviction that "there can't be anything to this; the Air Force has investigated it for years and years and shown that there is not a shred of evidence" - the sort of phraseology you heard a moment ago.

This even shows up abroad. Jacques Vallee, a French investigator of UFO's, who is now in this country, has written two fairly good books on the subject. I asked him; "Why doesn't the French government, for example, do something? He replied, "When we go to the French government, they say the U.S. Air Force has been spending a lot of money for many years on this and has shown there is nothing to it. Why should we spend French money?" And so this image of expertise that has been spread abroad - which has behind it zero - is holding this problem in a limbo that it must be blasted out of.

Although I saw some progress this week progress of an entirely different sort I don't think we are really going to get the serious concern among many top-notch scientists. What we need are scientists who are much better equipped than myself to look at this problem. This has to go to the top-caliber scientists all over the world, because something is involved here that is of concern to all of us. It is not a simple problem. I mean, obviously, how am I going to explain a 30-, 40-, 50-foot disk that goes by an experienced pilot like Mr. Powell, who, I understand has logged 18,000 hours and he sees this object just as he might see a Cadillac a few

Even the very best scientists are going to be very bewildered when they examine, as I, for example, have examined, the astounding volume of evidence that exists on this problem that has been generally put under the rug.

## Wire Services

The wire service editors know it's a lot of nonsense. If something happens out in Sauk Center, maybe even the Sauk Center Gazette doesn't report it. But if it does, the wire service editor is sure disinclined to report it. And so the discrepancy between what you as editors suspect is the nature of the problem and what you see in just looking at clipping service coverage - where you get all the Sauk Center Gazette reports - is, well, it's almost incredible.

I couldn't believe it when last spring I saw the NICAP clipping service coverage. I thought I knew something about the problem, but the number of incidents in Shamokin, Penn. or Custer, Wash., or what-have-you you never hear of them, and nobody else hears of them. If you read the New York Times and your own paper, you won't have heard of them, because we have collectively helped the Air Force forget about this somewhat uncomfortable problem. And you have helped. Yet, the evidence is simply astounding.

There are hoaxes; there are misinterpreted phenomena; there are all these things, of course. But there are not advanced test vehicles, believe me. No Air Force test vehicle is going to go for five miles behind a loaded gas truck in Oklahoma this sort of thing landing in the middle of cities. No

Well, I much prefer to talk about the purely scientific aspects of some of these explanations. I have no startling scientific illumination of the problem. It's baffling to me. Nothing in my scientific education prepares me to give you a pat explanation of what is going on here.

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