Documents / FOIA release

The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (Nicap)

Central Intelligence Agency · 2001-03-12 · 186 pages · text by OCR

This is a copy of "The UFO Evidence," a report published in May 1964 by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in Washington, D.C. and edited by Richard H. Hall. The CIA released its copy in 2001. The report draws 746 sightings from more than 5,000 signed reports and argues that unexplained UFOs are real, artificial objects under intelligent control. It criticizes Air Force secrecy and calls for a Congressional inquiry into Project Blue Book and a larger scientific investigation.

  • p. 11 …Should you need additional room, please use another sheet of paper. Please print or typewrite. Your…
  • p. 13 …await a full-fledged investigation by scientists using appropriate instrumentation, as NICAP advocates Section XIV. However…
  • p. 35 # SECTION IV # Army, Navy & Marine Corps The other armed services, required by law to channel UFO…
  • p. 37 …The crews of two commercial airliners and a Navy transport sighted a cigar-shaped object about…
  • p. 38 …Shortly after 8 p.m., he "noticed a brilliant white flashing light pass directly below us…
  • p. 40 …Moore, USN Domed circular UFO passed in front of two Navy planes confirmed by radar. Section…
  • p. 44 …Shenkel (both former Air Force pilots) and Steven Summers confirmed Baldwin's report. "All of us…
  • p. 50 …Matthews, CAA Tower Operator (over four years experience in aircraft observation with Navy and as a…
  • p. 55 …Often this argument is used by skeptics to imply that UFO reports result only from careless…
  • p. 76 …Arnold, a former Navy air identification and anti-aircraft gunnery control officer, said the UFOs changed…
  • p. 93 …Orrego, Chilean Navy. Reported sighting and photographing UFOs over an Antarctic base. Objects described as "one…
  • p. 95 …He obtained about 6-1/2 feet of Kodachrome film, using a Keystone Capri camera. The…
  • p. 99 …There were no Weather Bureau, Navy or Air Force balloons in the area at the time…
  • p. 100 …Huge "Moby Dick" plastic balloons (named after Melville's legendary whale) used for high altitude research…
  • p. 116 …When none can be found, the "shotgun" approach is used. Clearly, this is not a scientific…
  • p. 123 …Luis Sanchez Moreno, investigating for the Navy, told the press the Navy had been constantly concerned…
  • p. 129 …Lorenzen commented that "the rate of closure with us was much greater than any I had…
  • p. 130 …has twenty counselor members, among them Army, Navy and Naval Air Force officers on active duty…
  • p. 141 …The military had us just about convinced that no such objects existed. The only trouble was…
  • p. 145 …The following list, including one 1884 sighting, shows that many independent witnesses have used very similar…
# Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100010001-0 Statement by Former Air Force UFO Project Monitor

At the request of Major Keyhoe, I would like to confirm the existence of two USAF documents which were recently denied by an official USAF representative. These are:

1. An intelligence summary on UFOs prepared in 1948 by the organization which later became the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson AFB.

2. An intelligence analysis on specific aspects of UFO data which I prepared in 1952 while acting as UFO program monitor for Headquarters USAF, Washington, D.C.

Since both documents were classified when I last saw them, I am not at liberty to reveal their contents. I would also like to add a qualification about #2: I completed it in rough form just a few hours before my departure from Washington (following my release from active duty) and turned it over to one of my associates in the Directorate of Intelligence. Therefore, I never saw it in its published form. However, since I had prepared it - as well as other reports which I recorded on tape - at the specific request of my Branch and Division Chiefs, I am certain that it was published.

Another word of caution is necessary on the latter document: I prepared it primarily as a weapon for use against the apathy and/or bias on the subject which prevailed in certain official quarters. Although the processes of logic employed would stand up under ordinary circumstances, they become somewhat tenuous and difficult to defend completely when applied to the task in question. The important point should be, therefore, that such a document did exist - not that it did or did not establish anything about UFOs.

There is also a question about the report prepared by the panel of civilian scientists convened in January 1953 to examine the UFO data. I met with this panel during part of its deliberations; this was during the week when I was being processed off active duty. Since I had departed by the time the panel adjourned, I did not see any report which it may have prepared. However, since it was convened for the specific purpose of reviewing all available data and making recommendations on the UFO program, it must necessarily have left some sort of report, undoubtedly written. (I have since been informed that it did, although let me repeat that I never saw it.)

Suevy J. Tamnecker

Dewey J. Fournet, Jr.

Baton Rouge, La.

May 4, 1958

Cases discussed

About this file

FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 186 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.