Scientists Debate the Question of UFO's

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

American test vehicle is going to be tested in Brazil or New Zealand and no Russian test vehicle is going to be test

test vehicle is going to be tested in the United States or England. There is every reason to believe that the phenomenon is global. They are not advanced test vehicles; they are not hallucinations. I have had three sessions with psychologists and I have asked them, "Is there anything in your clinical experience that would match this?" The answer is, "No, it certainly doesn't sound like anything psychological." After all, there are cases involving dozens of witnesses and

others involving radar sightings although if the Air Force is involved, the sightings are disclaimed and blamed on weather, electronic malfunctions and so on; at least that's how they have been so attributed since 1953. If you want to get all the Air Force radar sightings, you go back before the CIA request for a "debunking" policy and Air Force Regulation 2000-2.

## . A Beginning

Well, what is to be done? The Colorado Program (an Air Force-sponsored study) is a beginning, but I am uneasy about the Colorado Program. There is not nearly enough scientific talent on that program. I have said that quite openly - without intending to carp - to many people in Washington. It should be beefed up immediately. What we need is much more attention to this problem, and that, unfortunately, requires money. But it also requires people and that is what is short out at Colorado. I'm afraid they have not taken the problem seriously enough to muster the scientific talent to do justice to that.

We need an immediate escalation of the problem. Congressional inquiry, if you can press for it, will perhaps do the trick; it might also send the problem awry. I don't have great confidence in a congressional inquiry being the greatest solution. I'll

continue to try, as one scientist, to pursue it in other

a science-oriented agency, not the military. And by their own statement, with which I agree, there is no clear-cut evidence of hostility. But let's get it into a scientific agency.

Amusingly, all my efforts to interest NASA in this gives me the feeling that they think it's nonsense too. I think they have been moodwinked and sort of unintentionally brainwashed for years and years. And all this is not as a result of any high-level conspiracy. It's just a foulup. But a foulup of really incredible proportions. We must launch a new level of investigation.

There are very specific things. Radar is already deployed. The trouble is it's compromised by present regulations. There are many radar sightings. This would be an immediate objective source of information that could be put into scientific terms and be very useful.

There are a number of electromagnetic effects known in the evidence - carstopping cases, for instance. In Texas, in 1957, the fascinating case, nine different vehicles stopped. But this is going on all the time. NICAP must have 150 examples of this. It's going on in Australia, England and so on.

Associated with this are apparently interference effects, radio and TV, magnetometers, compasses, a lot of electromagnetic effects. Science knows a lot about electromagnetic sensing devices, and many things could be done quickly if only the problem were taken seriously.

## Airline Reports

There are many airline reports in the old evidence. But once the Air Force began to discredit pilots and they have, in some cases, unmercifully discredited them that source of information pretty much dried up.

That can be changed. Mobile teams need to be prepared to get out into the field in a hurry with a lot of gear. And this can be done. I discussed this in the Pentagon last week with the people

The whole question of the pre-1947 sightings, which I

must be looked at by historical scholars as well as students of the history of technology, to examine the interesting question of whether sightings that appear to constitute a continuum at low levels, running back to the turn of the century at least, are the same phenomena. NICAP is coming out with a volume in a few months, one that represents a good compilation of evidence. But historical sophistication is needed to assess the evidence. That is a very important thing to do, because the whole nature of the problem is quite different, if it is the case — and I lean in this direction — that aside from the marked increase beginning in 1947, there appears to be the same phenomenon of craft - like, machine-like objects operating in our environment for tens of years.

The heart of the problem is the "ridicule lid," and you're sitting on it. You're sitting on it in a way that is very important. Get off that lid! That is, get your wire service people to take it seriously; look at the problem yourself; examine it for yourself and get off that lid, because that is a big part of the problem now.

You don't know whether changes in the frequency of sightings is a real change, or whether they occur just because you have given it serious credence in your area, which makes people come out with reports that they wouldn't otherwise have told a soul about.

You are on the lid. Get off it. Ask for congressional investigation.

My report lists 18 or 20 editorial comments. It shows that some of your colleagues have already pressed for this too faintly in the past. Have a look for yourself at the evidence. You will find an astounding picture of enormous interest that has been mishandled and misrepresented for far too long.

Weft, I too have examined the evidence and I have drawn slightly different conclusions from those presented by the previous speaker.

('The previous speaker was Dr. McDonald, who said that he had concluded, after a 12month study of "the extremely interesting problem of unidentified flying objects" that a proper approach was not being taken toward them by the Air Force or others, and that a closer look should be taken. Dr. McDonald said, "Something is going on here of the greatest scientific interest that has been shoved under a rug, ridiculed, and laughed at." Dr. McDonald's view is that UFO's very well may be visitors from space.)

Similar sightings of flying saucers go far back in history, where they have assumed different forms for different people. Old records refer to them as fiery dragons, fiery chariots, wills-o'-thewisp, jack-o'-lanterns, firedrakes, fox fire and even the devil himself.

And now we are having urged on us a new legend to explain a rash of mysterious sightings. Certain UFO buffs argue that the peculiar properties and maneuvers of these apparitions, as reported by reliable people of all different kinds, are so remarkable that only one explanation for them is possible: they must be vehicles from outer space, manned by beings far more intelligent than we, because the operators have clearly built vehicles capable of something far beyond anything we can conceive of. This is the argument that we are asked to accept.

On the face of it, it sounds much like the reasoning of Sherlock Holmes, who said on several occasions, "It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." I am willing to go along with this formula, but only after we have followed Holmes and excluded every possibility but that of manned UFO's. And we must also show that no further possibilities exist

Approved For Release 2003/1704 : CIA-RDP69B00369R000200240055-8 about that sort of thing than I do.