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This declassified CIA memorandum, dated 16 February 1953, reports on the Office of Scientific Intelligence Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, which met January 14 to 18, 1953. It gives a session-by-session history of the meetings, along with panel comments left out of the formal report, including a critique of the Navy's analysis of the Tremonton film. The appended panel report, signed by chairman H. P. Robertson and others, found no direct threat to national security. It recommended stripping UFOs of their special status and starting a public education and debunking program.
“Charles Fort”1 page
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# Approved For Release 2001/08/07 : CIA-RDP81R00560R0000030027-0 SECRET Security Information PART VI: COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS OF PANEL ## GENERAL The Panel Members were impressed (as have been others, including O/SI personnel) in the lack of sound data in the great majority of case histories; also, in the lack of speedy follow-up due primarily to the modest size and limited facilities of the ATIC section concerned. Among the case histories of significant sightings discussed in detail were the following: Bellefontaine, Ohio (1 August 1952); Tremonton, Utah (2 July 1952); Great Falls, Montana (15 August 1950); Yaak, Montana (1 September 1952); Washington, D.C. area (19 July 1952); and Haneda A.F.B., Japan (5 August 1952), Fort Huron, Michigan (29 July 1952); and Presque Isle, Maine (10 October 1952). After review and discussion of these cases (and about 15 others, in less detail), the Panel concluded that reasonable explanations could be suggested for most sightings and "by deduction and scientific method it could be induced (given additional data) that other cases might be explained in a similar manner." The Panel pointed out that because of the brevity of some sightings (e.g. 2-3 seconds) and the inability off the witnesses to express themselves clearly (sometimes) that conclusive explanations could not be expected for every case reported. Furthermore, it was considered that, normally, it would be a great waste of effort to try to solve most of the sightings, unless such action would benefit a training and educational program (see below). The writings of Charles Fort were referenced
Document, cited by the archive. 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. 28 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.