Documents / FOIA release
This declassified CIA document, released in 2013, is F. C. Durant's memorandum of 16 February 1953 on the Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects. The Office of Scientific Intelligence convened the panel from January 14 to 18, 1953, and Dr. H. P. Robertson chaired it. The memorandum gives a history of the meetings and the members' unofficial comments. The panel found no evidence of a direct threat to national security and rejected the Navy's analysis of the Tremonton film. It recommended an educational program to reduce public concern. The release also contains a later Air Force summary of a 1955 statistical study.
“Cooper”4 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
of the sky is now and has been for many years under surveillance every clear night in several meteor and aurora observing programs as well as sky mapping programs at the various locations listed below. Although the attention of those astronomers is largely directed toward identified rather than unidentified objects, no case of any striking unidentified object is known to Dr. Page or Dr. Hynek. Such an object would most certainly be reported if found on patrol plates. A case was cited where an astronomer refused to interrupt his exposure in order to photograph an alleged sighting in a different part of the sky. This led Dr. Hynek to say that, if a program of watching could be an adjunct of planned astronomical programs, little cost would be involved and that the trained astronomical personnel might photograph a sighting of an unidentified object. The location of some of these programs and their directors are believed to be: a. Harvard University, Cambridge and New Mexico (meteor patrol) Whipple. b. Yerkes Observatory, University of Chicago and Fort Davis, Texas (several programs)—Meinel (auroras), Kuiper (asteroids), Morgan (wide angle camera). c. University of Alaska, Fairbanks (aurorae) Elvey d. Dominion Observatory, Ottawa (meteors)—Millman e. Palomar Observatory, California (sky map)—Minkowski f. Lick Observatory, California (sky map) Shane SECRET Security Information
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. 38 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.