Documents / FOIA release
This CIA-released copy, approved for release in 2001, reproduces a LOOK magazine condensation of John G. Fuller's book The Interrupted Journey. It recounts Betty and Barney Hill's September 19, 1961 sighting near Indian Head, New Hampshire, their two missing hours, Dr. Benjamin Simon's hypnosis sessions and Walter Webb's NICAP investigation. Simon found neither patient psychotic but said nothing was proved. The file also includes an Air Force UFO report form and a letter from J. Allen Hynek urging scientific study of UFOs.
“The Iron Skeptic”1 page
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100010003-8 # Air Force lethargy? The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) is a nonprofit organization incorporated in the District of Columbia. Its main purposes are scientific investigation and research of reported unidentified flying objects, and encouragement of full reporting to the public by responsible authorities of all information that the Government has accumulated on this subject. The U.S. Air Force is charged with the official investigation of UFOS. NICAP contends that the Air Force has practiced a questionable degree of secrecy, keeping the public in the dark about the amount and possible significance of evidence it has been given. There have been thousands of sightings throughout the world by Air Force pilots, navigators; by military personnel in the Army, Navy and Marine Corps; by commercial pilots, aviation experts and private citizens. One of the many current myths about UFOS is that no trained observers have reported seeing them. Skeptics ask: "If UFOS are real, why haven't astronomers seen them?" They have, on many occasions. But a significant number of scientists have told NICAP privately that it would be professional suicide for them to discuss the subject openly. FROM NICAP REPORT. BY PERMISSION. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, chairman of the Department of Astronomy of Northwestern University, has no connection whatsoever with NICAP. He was in charge of the optical satellite tracking program of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, Mass. For 18 years, he has been scientific consultant to the Air Force on uFos and has screened over 10,000 cases in their files, investigating many of them personally. "UFOS demand serious and immediate scientific attention," he told a meeting of scientists recently. "The myth is not put to rest, and the scientific fraternity must now take cognizance of them. We can no longer dismiss the subject. When I started to investigate this phenomenon in 1948, I thought the whole thing would go up in smoke. It has taken till now for serious scientists to begin to look at the phenomenon with care and caution." In August, the Air Force said it hoped to contract with a leading university to undertake a program of intensive investigation of certain UFO reports. Teams would include at least one scientist familiar with atmospheric physics, and a psychologist with clinical experience. The initial budget would be $300,000 to cover an 18-month period. journey. The object continued its unpredictable movement. The Hills stopped briefly several times. At one of the stops, a few miles north of Cannon Mountain, Betty said, "Barney, if you think that's a satellite, or a star, you're being absolutely ridiculous." "It's a commercial plane," Barney now concluded. "Probably on its way to Canada." Around 12 o'clock, they approached the enormous and somber silhouette of Cannon Mountain. Barney parked the car in a picnic area that commanded a wide view to the west. He looked again at the strange moving light and noted that it swung suddenly from its northern flight pattern, turned to the west, then completed its turn and headed back directly toward them. The Hills got out of the car. "It's gotto be a plane," Barney said. "A commercial liner." "With a crazy course like that?" Betty asked, following him with Delsey. "Then it's a Piper Cub. With some hunters who might be lost." "It's not the hunting season," Betty said, as Barney took the binoculats from her. "And I don't hear a sound." Neither did Barney. "It might be a helicopter," he said as he looked through the binoculars. He was sure that it wasn't, but was reaching for any kind of explanation that would make sense. "The wind might be carrying the sound in the other direction." "There is no wind, Barney." Through the binoculars, Barney now made out a shape like the fuselage of a plane, although he could see no wings. He also saw a series of lights along the fuselage, blinking in an alternating pattern. When Betty took the glasses, the object passed in front of the moon, in silhouette. It seemed to be flashing thin pencils of different colored lights. The object itself appeared cigar-shaped to her. It had increased its speed, then slowed down again as it crossed the face of the moon. The lights were flashing persistently, red, amber, green and blue. Betty turned to her husband and asked him to take another look. "It's got to be a plane," Barney insisted. "Maybe a military plane. A search plane. Maybe it's a plane that's lost." He was irritated by Betty's refusal to accept any natural explanation. Several years earlier, Betty's sister and family had told about seeing an unidentified flying object in Kingston, N.H., and Betty tended to believe the story. Barney resisted the idea that such objects existed. The dachshund was whining and cowed. Betty gave the binoculars to Barney and took Delsey back to the car. Barney focused the glasses on the object and strained to hear a sound: the throb of a propeller-driven plane or the whir of a jet. He heard none. For the first time, he felt he was being observed, that the object was actually attempting to circle them. Getting back into the car, he told Betty that he felt the craft had seen them and was playing games with them. They drove slowly on toward Cannon Mountain, catching glimpses of the object as it moved erratically in the sky. As they approached the base of the mountain, the object suddenly swung behind the dark silhouette of trees and disappeared. Barney increased his speed, and as the car moved past the blackness of the Old Man of the Mountains, the object appeared again, gliding silently, leisurely, parallel to the car. It appeared to be only a few hundred feet to the right, above the car. Earlier, it had seemed to be spinning; now, it was still, and the former blinking, multicolored lights gave off a steady, white glow. Through the binoculars, Betty saw a double row of windows. It was clearly a structured craft of enormous dimensions—just how large she couldn't determine because both distance and altitude were hard to judge. As she watched, a red light came out on the left side of the object, followed by a similar one on the right. "Barney," she said, "stop the car and look! You've never seen anything like this in your life." He looked through the windshield and could see it plainly now. It was not more than 200 feet in the air, he thought, and coming closer. Barney stopped the car at Indian Head, took the binoculars and got out. The motor was still running. The object was hovering silently in the air, not more than a short city block away, not more than two treetops high. Its full shape was apparent for the first time: that of a large, glowing pancake. "Do you see it? Do you see it?" Betty called. Her voice was rising. Later, Barney admitted frankly that he was scared, yet he walked a few feet forward and looked again. As he did so, the object—as wide in diameter as the distance between three telephone poles along the road—swung in a silent arc across the road, not more than a hundred feet from him. The double row of windows was now clear. For a reason he cannot yet explain, Barney found himself moving across the road into the field, then across the field, directly toward the mysterious object. The enormous disc was raked on an angle toward him. Two finlike projections on either side were sliding out, each with a red light on it. The windows curved around the perimeter of the thick, pancakelike disc, glowing with brilliant white light. Still, there was no sound. # What is a humanoid? The term is anthropological, indicating a creature with some, but not all, of the facial and physical characteristics of human beings as we know them. Barney Hill, who was "abducted" by humanoids and taken aboard their flying ship, remembers that, "The men had rather odd-shaped heads, with a large cranium, diminishing in size as it got toward the chin. And the eyes continued around to the sides of their heads, so that it appeared that they could see several degrees beyond the lateral extent of our vision. And something that I remembered, after listening to the tapes, is the mouth itself. I could not describe the mouth. But it was much like when you draw one horizontal line, with a short perpendicular line on each end. This horizontal line would represent the lips without the muscle that we have. And it would part slightly as they made this mumumumming sound. The texture of the skin, as I remember it from this quick glance, was grayish, almost metallic looking. I didn't notice any hair-or any headgear either for that matter. Also, I didn't notice any nose, there just seemed to be two slits that represented the nostrils."
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. 29 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.