Documents / FOIA release
This is a Baltimore Sun wire story from Tucson, dated October 7, and kept in the CIA's files, where it was approved for release in 2004. It reports a charge by University of Arizona physicist Dr. James E. McDonald that the CIA ordered the Air Force to "debunk" UFO stories, an order he said he found attached to the 1953 Robertson Report at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Maj. Hector Quintanilla of Project Blue Book rejected the charge. The article also notes a University of Colorado UFO research grant of about $300,000.
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# BALTIMORE SUN Approved For Release 2004136810 : CIA-RDP75-00149R000500070006-7 # 'DEBUNKING' CHARGED ON UFO STORIES Researcher Says CIA Is Putting Pressure On Air Force Tucson, Ariz., Oct. 7 (A)—The United States Central Intelligence Agency has ordered the Air Force to "debunk" stories on unidentified flying objects, a University of Arizona physicist charged yesterday. Dr. James E. McDonald, senior physicist at the university's Institute of Atmospheric Physics, said the hush-hush policy has throttled any scientific investigation of the objects. And he said there is reason to believe some of the objects may carry persons from outer space on reconnaisance missions over the earth. He made his comments in a talk to scientists in the department of meteorology yesterday. However, just today the Air Force announced that the University of Colorado has been awarded a research grant of about $300,000 to undertake independent investigations of reports on unidentified flying objects. McDonald, also an adviser of the Navy's Storm Fury panel, said he reached the extraterrestial theory reluctant after years of research on the UFO problem. Discovered CIA Order While doing research at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, 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 calted 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. At Wright-Patterson, however, the head of the Air Force Blue Book Project, which investigates UFO reports, discounted McDonald's remarks and accused him of using "bad verbage." Maj. Hector Quintanilla said the "major portion" of the 1953 report had long since been declassified. He said its purpose was not to discourage scientific investigations but to remove the aura of danger from UFO sightings.
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.