Documents / FOIA release

The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (Nicap)

Central Intelligence Agency · 2001-03-12 · 186 pages · text by GLM-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. 8 …the amount and kind of UFO information in the files, and whether all significant non-security…
  • p. 17 …suggesting a unique and unexplained phenomenon Section XII, (b) that the observed objects and patterns have…
  • p. 26 …unexplained aerial objects are seen with regularity by observers who spend more time than the average…
  • p. 66 …From the hundreds of cases on file, the following have been selected to provide a survey…
  • p. 90 …The CAA radar report, obtained later, virtually proved that unexplained objects were operating over Los Angeles…
  • p. 110 …about unexplained cases are to be referred to the Office of Information Services in the Pentagon…
  • p. 112 …the generalized "fact sheets." The unexplained cases for each year are briefly described. (In the new…
  • p. 121 …1) the Air Force is conducting a thorough scientific investigation, and (2) nothing truly unexplainable is…
  • p. 161 …Taped statement on file at NICAP). The dramatic visual sightings of unexplained lights in the same…
  • p. 165 …The following chronology lists the 118 cases which appear to be authentic and presently unexplainable, plus…
  • p. 176 …were unexplainable. I assume you have written a letter to the Members of the House and…
  • p. 181 …The developed film showed a bright unexplained object, in the wrong position for the satellite. This…
  • p. 182 …Interpretation of the accumulating unexplained reports could then be accomplished (without any "aura of mystery") through…

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

# Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100010001-0

divergent interpretations of some of the cases in this report, we suggest two books which present the skeptical position:

Flying Saucers and the U.S. Air Force, Lt. Col. Lawrence J. Tacker, (Van Nostrand, 1960).

The World of Flying Saucers, Dr. Donald H. Menzel, (Doubleday, 1963).

Both books argue that UFOs have been adequately investigated, and that there is no evidence indicating they are anything other than misidentified conventional objects or phenomena.

This report contains a total of 746 UFO sightings. The main chronology [Section XI] lists 575 cases, with cross-references. (Statistics based on the main chronology are reported in Section XII) The witnesses in $50\%$ of these cases were trained or experienced observers. An additional 171 cases are included in separate chronologies [Section XII] which show the major concentrations of UFO sightings.

The reports come from 46 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico and Central America, 6 South American countries, 10 European countries, 4 African countries, 5

Asian countries, Australia and New Zealand, major oceans and numerous islands.

States with the highest frequency of sightings, as indicated by the selective process used, were: (1) California; (2) Ohio; (3) New Mexico; (4) Florida; (5) Illinois.

Other countries: (1) England; (2) France; (3) Canada; (4) Japan; (5) Brazil.

Of the 575 cases, two UFOs were observed in 41 cases, three UFOs in 30 cases, more than three UFOs in 81 cases. The remainder were observations of single objects.

Richard Hall

Washington, D. C.

May 1964

Cases discussed

About this file

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. 186 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.