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.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
levels in such education from enlisted personnel to command and research personnel. Relative emphasis and degree of explanation of different programs would correspond to the categories of duty (e.g., radar operators; pilots; control tower operators; Ground Observer Corps personnel; and officers and enlisted men in other categories.) This training should result in a marked reduction in reports caused by misidentification and resultant confusion. The "debunking" aim would result in reduction in public interest in "flying saucers" which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such as television, motion pictures, and popular articles. Basis of such education would be actual case histories which had been puzzling at first but later explained. As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the "secret" is known. Such a program should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public and consequently their susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda. The Panel noted that the general absence of Russian propaganda based on a subject with so many obvious possibilities for exploitation might indicate a possible Russian official policy. Members of the Panel had various suggestions related to the plan ning of such an educational program. It was felt strongly that psychologists familiar with mass psychology should advise on the nature and extent of the program. In this connection, Dr. Hadley Cantril (Princeton University) was suggested. Cantril authored "Invasion from 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.