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This CIA document, released through The Black Vault, holds F. C. Durant's memorandum of 16 February 1953 on the Office of Scientific Intelligence Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, which met from January 14 to 18, 1953 under Dr. H. P. Robertson. The panel found no evidence of a direct threat to national security. It rejected the Navy analysis of the Tremonton film and recommended an educational program. The file also contains an Air Force statistical study summary from 1955 that calls advanced unknown technology highly improbable.
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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
Document, cited by the archive. 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. 39 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.