Flying Saucers Again: Do You Believe in Them?

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

# Flying Saucers Again: CIA RBP81R10560R00100010009-2

# Do You Believe in Them?

## By CHARLES COOKE

The Unbellevers Implacably don't believe—and the Believers implacably do believe—in the existence, or "reality," of certain famous movable bodies—namely the alluringly mysterious Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs

popularly called Flying Saucers. These things (if you are a Believer) or non-things (if you are an Unbeliever) have in recent years been reported in such waves, indeed blizzards, world-wide, that the Air Force's Project Blue Book, charged with the responsibility of recording, evaluating, and reporting on them to the public, has, to date, studied and explained (or left unexplained) over 10,000 reported sightings.

That statistic alone would seem to indicate that something is going on up there, would it not? (I'm

Charles Cooke, a retired Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, was the founder and first editor of the Air Force's official intelligence publication, the "Air Intelligence Digest," published at the Pentagon, and later editor of the Far East Air Force's "FEAF Intelligence Roundup," published in Tokyo.

going to do my best to be objective in this article, and not fall into what lawyers call special pleading, despite my own orientation in the controversy.

I'm a Believer.

I was not persuaded, or shoved, into this position by any of the books listed with this article, convincing though they (with the exception of the last one in the list) are. My belief began in 1948 and has grown steadily, until today it is, as befits the faith of a True Believer, implacable.

In this article I am merely going to state my qualifications for writing it; review the listed books briefly from a certain special angle; then bring in some background material which has not, to my knowledge, been discussed very often in print before.

This background material was dug up by me as a labor of insatiable curiosity rather than of love most of it during long treasure hunts in the enormous archives of old magazine and newspaper

issues at the Library of Congress The ever-obliging Library photo statted the nuggets I found, and they are in my files.

Writer's Qualifications

In World War II, I was an intelligence officer serving first in England and then on the Continent with a bombardment group of the old B-26s, or "Martin Marauders". Discharged in 1946, I returned in 1948 to active duty at the Pentagon as the founder and first editor of the "Air Intelligence Digest," the official intelligence publication of the world-wide Air Force. Later, in Tokyo, I became editor of the Far East Air Force's parallel publication, the "FEAF Intelligence Roundup."

The contents of these publications were classified, but their names were not. Not immodestly, but as part of my statement of qualifications. I mention that I received an official commendation for my work as editor of the Pentagon "Digest" from Gen. Charles P. Cabell, Director of Intelligence, U. S. Air Force, and later, for years, Vice Chief of the Central Intelligence Agency; and a Bronze Star citation for my work as editor of the Tokyo "Roundup" from Gen. Don Z. Zimmerman, Deputy for Intelligence, Far East Air Force.

From 1948 to 1952 at the Pentagon, and from 1952 to 1955 in Tokyo, my desk was one of several across which flowed "information copies" of the steadily increasing stream of UFO sightings then being reported to the Air Force.

## Project Blue Book

The responsibility for evaluating these reports, then and now, has belonged to a USAF unit located at the Wright-Patterson Air Base in Dayton, Ohio, whither Air Force business often took me. The unit was first called Project Sign, then Project Grudge, finally (and to this day) Project Blue Book.

Project Blue Book is mentioned everywhere you look nowadays, and I have found myself telling people: "I named it Project Blue Book." People, raising their eyebrows to varying levels of incredulity, reply: "Did you?" I reply: "I did." Sometimes I explain, sometimes I don't. The explanation is that the Pentagon, becoming understandably disenchanted with Project Grudge as a code name, asked in 1952 for suggestions for a new name, one "without overtones."

I, as editor of the "Air Intelligence Digest," suggested Project

ceived, but got expanded "Upstairs"—at Joint Chiefs of Staff level—to "blue book."

The code name Project Blue Book was thus born—and you have just read the whole truth about my modest participation. I was only its half-father.

Despite the fact that I had no UFO responsibilities, no one, in the USAF assembly line down which the reports passed, read and pondered them more absorbedly, more dedicatedly, than I.

## Three Aspects

I was especially interested in three aspects...

One: I duly noted the myriad "Explanations" given out by the Blue Book staff—widely referred to as "The Little Boy Blues" or "The Little Blue Boys"—of sightings which they evaluated as mistakenly identified stars, planets, comets, meteors, ionized clouds, airplanes, helicopters, balloons, auroral streamers, birds, reflected lights, miages, marsh gas—or as illusions, delusions, hallucinations, psychic aberrations, hoaxes, publicity stunts, gags, pranks, etc.

Three: I noted that the date of "the first reported UFO sighting" was given—and still is—seemingly thousands of times—in the press and even in some official reports as June 24, 1947, the date of the famous "Arnold sighting".

Two: I noted that the hard core of "unexplained" sightings fluctuated from as high as 7 percent to as low as 2 percent but, significantly, never lower.

On that date, Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot flying from Chehalis to Yakima in the state of Washington, reported seeing "nine saucerlike things . . . flying like geese in a diagonal, chain-like line and approaching Mt. Rainier." They "swerved in and out of the high peaks," according to Arnold, at a speed he estimated to be 1,200 miles an hour.

ing, perhaps that book has so many overtones that it has, in effect, none. "Book" was well re-