Documents / FOIA release
This CIA release, approved in 2001, is a set of reprinted science press articles about UFOs from 1969 to 1971. A Science News piece reports that UFO sightings fell after the 1968 Condon report and gives NICAP and academic views on why. An AIAA UFO Subcommittee review calls the Condon report the most scientific study so far but argues that its hard core of unexplained cases justifies further study. A Science editorial by Hudson Hoagland argues that more UFO investigation would be wasteful.
“UFO Research Society”4 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100010011-9 ## BACKGROUND At the suggestion of the AIAA management, the Technical Committee on Atmospheric Environment and the Technical Committee on Space and Atmospheric Physics jointly formed a UFO Subcommittee in 1967. The Subcommittee was asked to arrive at an unbiased assessment of the present situation and to serve as a focal point in the AIAA for questions regarding the UFO problem. In appointing the Subcommittee, special care was taken to insure that none of its members was committed one way or another on this issue. In its attempt to get to the heart of the matter, the Subcommittee naturally found the UFO problem complicated and often buried in what appeared to be a maze of preconceptions, emotions, bias, hasty conclusions, and excessive and misleading publicity. The Subcommittee soon recognized that it is much too early to expect a meaningful interpretation of UFO phenomena. Rather than enter the arena of speculation, it directed its efforts toward finding out whether or not a scientific problem exists at all. The acccompanying report describes the approach the Subcommittee took and the results it obtained. J.P.K. ## AIAA UFO SUBCOMMITTEE Chairman: Joachim P. Kuettner Environmental Research Laboratories National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, Cole. Members: Jerold Bidwell Martin-Marietta, Denver, Colo. Glenn A. Cato TRW Systems, Redondo Beach, Calif. Bernard N. Charles Hughes Aircraft, El Segundo, Calif. Murray Dryer NOAA Environmental Research Laboratories Howard D. Edwards Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga. Paul MacCready Jr. Meteorology Research Inc., Altadena, Calif. Andrew J. Masley McDonnell Douglas Missile & Space Systems, Santa Monica, Calif. Robert Rados NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Donald M. Swingle U.S. Army Electronics Command, Fort Monmouth, N.J. Secretary: Vernon J. Zurich NOAA Environmental Research Laboratories pecially true if the study team decides-as the University of Colorado group did-to concentrate on current rather than past observations. As the UFO statistics show, this results in the devotion of precious time to investigating the noise, rather than the signal. It was mentioned earlier that the Colorado University study faced formidable odds because of the short mendation of the O'Brien committee to negotiate multiple contracts for continuing investigations had been followed, this difficulty would perhaps have been avoided. There is also little hope to expect a solution of this extremely complex problem by the efforts of a single individual. The Subcommittee sees the only promising approach as a continuing, on improved data collection by objective means and on high-quality scientific analysis. This would eliminate the difficult problem of witness credibility. An economic and technically sound approach involving available remotesensing capabilities and certain software changes will require some thinking on the side of the aerospace engineering community. Proposals along this line are already in the hands of the Subcommittee. The financial support should be kept at a moderately low level (It is estimated that a small fraction of the costs of the University of Colorado study would be required initially) until reevaluation of the situation allows another assessment. Without such an effort the controversy can be expected to suffer further polarization and confusion. The Subcommittee feels that a strictly scientific-technological view of the UFO problem leads to this conclusion and that, for a technical committee, there is no need to stress the public and social aspects of the UFO controversy, which may have subsided only temporarily and will continue to clamor for a more conclusive and convincing answer. The Subcommittee is aware of several books on UFOs to be published in the near future. What is needed now is a moratorium in the UFO discussion—with an objective, wait-and-see attitude on the part of the scientific and engineering community, the government, and the public. The approach recommended by this committee requires not only the attention of the scientist and engineer, but also a readiness of government agencies to consider sound proposals in this field without bias or fear of ridicule and repercussion—or, as Condon expresses it, "on an openminded, unprejudiced basis." This perhaps is our most important conclusion. Finally, the Subcommittee believes the decision by the Air Force to divorce itself from the UFO problem should be completed by allowing the files to be archived by a civilian agency, either government or university, after proper safeguards for the protection of witnesses and their names as well as full declassification procedures. This Subcommittee intends to publish additional information on the UFO problem in the AIAA journals to give the members of AIAA an opportunity to form their own opinion. This information will include typical examples of the so-called "hard-core residue" and some potential engineering approaches to a solution of the
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. 9 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.