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.
As the study of the current cases progressed, it became increasingly obvious that if reporting and investigating procedures could be further improved, the percentages of those cases which contained insufficient information and those remaining unexplained would be greatly reduced. The key to a higher percentage of solutions appeared to be in rapid "on the spot" investigations by trained personnel. On the basis of this, a revised program was established by AF Reg. 200-2 Subject: "Unidentified Flying Objects Reporting" (Short Title:UFOB) dated 12 August 1954. This new program, which had begun to show marked results before January 1955, provided primarily that the 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron (Air Defense Command) would carry out all field investigations. This squadron has sufficient units and is so deployed as to be able to arrive "on the spot" within a very short time after a report is received. After treatment by the 4602d AISS, all information is supplied to the Air Technical Intelligence Center for final evaluation. This cooperative program has resulted, since 1 January 1955, in reducing the insufficient information cases to 7% and the unknown cases to 3%, of the totals. The period 1 January 1955 to 5 May 1955 accounted for 131 unidentified aerial object reports received. Evaluation percentages of these are as follows: Balloons -26% Aircraft -21% Astronomical -23% Other -20% Insufficient Info -7% Unknown -3% All available data were included in this study which was prepared by a panel of scientists both in and out of the Air Force. On the basis of this study it is believed that all the unidentified aerial objects could have been explained if more complete observational data had been available. Insofar as the reported aerial objects which still remain unexplained are concerned, there exists little information other than the impressions and interpretations of their observers. As these impressions and interpretations have been replaced by the use of FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
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.