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
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indications of hostile action, and the cultivation of a morbid national psychology in which skillful hostile propaganda could induce hysterical behavior and harmful distrust of duly constituted authority. 4. In order most effectively to strengthen the national facilities for the timely recognition and the appropriate handling of true indications of hostile action, and to minimize the concomitant dangers alluded to above, the Penel recommends: a. That the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired; b. That the national security agencies institute policies on intelligence, training, and public education designed to prepare the material defenses and the morale of the country to recognize most promptly and to react most effectively to true indications of hostile intent or action. We suggest that these aims may be achieved by an integrated program designed to reassure the public of the total lack of evidence of inimical forces behind the phenomena, to train personnel to recognize and reject false indications quickly and effectively, and to strengthen regular channels for the evaluation of and prompt reaction to true indications of hostile measures. / a/ H. P. Robertson , Chairman California Institute of Technology /s/ Lloyd V. Berkner Associated Universities, Inc. / s/ Luis W. Alvarez University of California /S. A. Goudamit Brookhaven National Laboratories / a/ Thornton Page Johns Hopkins University
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.