Documents / FOIA release
This newspaper article, held in the files of the Central Intelligence Agency and dated 2004-01-06 in the archive, reports claims by Dr. James E. McDonald, a University of Arizona physicist. McDonald says the CIA ordered the Air Force to debunk UFO reports, and that the order was attached to the 1953 Robertson Report and signed by Philip G. Strong. He argues that no real scientific investigation has been done. He cites a police pursuit from Ravenna, Ohio, to Conway, Pennsylvania, and says Air Force regulation 200-2 blocks the release of reports.
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# UFO Reports Throttled by CIA, Physicist Says ## Arizona Researcher Charges Agency Has Ordered Air Force to Debunk Stories TUCSON (A)—The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has ordered the Air Force to debunk stories on unidentified flying objects, a University of Arizona physicist charges. Dr. James E. McDonald, senior physicist at the UA Institute of Atmospheric Physics, said the hushhush policy has throttled any scientific investigation of the objects. He said there is reason to believe some of the objects may carry persons from outer space on reconnaissance missions over the earth. He made his comments in a talk to scientists in the department of meteorology. ## Discovers Order McDonald, also an adviser on the Navy's Storm Fury panel, said he reached the extraterrestial theory reluctantly after years of research on the UFO problem. While doing research at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where the Air Force filed its flying saucer reports, McDonald said he discovered the CIA order—with the notation that its role not be disclosed. McDonald said the order was attached to a book of UFO investigations compiled by scientists and called the Robertson Report. Completed in 1953, some of the report was declassified a short time later. But McDonald noted that only three of its four sections were declassified and when he tried to follow up his original research by seeking photostatic copies, it was suddenly reclassified. He said a CIA agent named. Philip G. Strong. signed the order to debunk UFO sightings. The official explanation, McDonald said, was that such reports were clogging intelligence channels. "I don't feel it's so much a cover-up," McDonald said. "But the truth is that there's been no real scientific investigation of these reports. "People who make them are exposed to ridicule and accused of seeing miages." McDonald said the observers, for the most part, are too reliable to be brushed off so lightly. He cited the case last April 17 where sheriff's deputies from Ravenna, Ohio, pursued "a luminous object" at 100 m.p.h. to Conway, Pa. ## Joined by Policemen The distance was nearly 100 miles, McDonald said, and they were joined by two police officers from nearby communities after they heard their radio transmissions. "The Air Force had its explanation ready," McDonald said, "after a four minute telephone interview with the deputies which started out with the question 'Now, what about that mirage you saw?' " McDonald said hundreds of reports never reach the general public because of the debunking policy. He said the silent treatment was begun after the rash of sightings in 1952 which reached a peak that summer. International Geophysics Year scientists on an Arctic expedition noted similar phenomena, he said. The blockade to scientists and others who attempt an investigation, said McDonald, is Air Force regulation 200-2. This, he said, is the rule that makes it a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine for any air base official to give out such information. "It all has to go to Wright-Patterson where it's buried," McDonald said.
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. 1 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.