Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency release, approved in 2004, collects 1966 memoranda on Air Force requests to declassify the 1953 report of the scientific panel on unidentified flying objects that the Office of Scientific Intelligence convened. The memos trace the USAF requests of July 1966, the press interest behind them, and the 15 August forwarding of a sanitized version with CIA references removed. The attached panel comments found no threat to national security, judged the Tremonton film to probably show birds, and recommended a training and debunking program.
“Charles Fort”2 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
# Approved For Release 2004/03/26 CIA-RDP81R00560R000100040001-7 Security Information that "astrange things in the sky" had been recorded for hundreds of yeas. It appeared obvious that there was no single explanation for a majority of the things seen. The presence of radar and astro- nomical specialists on the Panel proved of value at once in their confident recognition of phenomena related to their fields. It was apparent that specialists in such additional fields as psychology, meteorology, aerodynamics, earthology and military air operations would extend the ability of the Panel to recognize many more categories of little-known phenomena. ON TAKK OR DRAFTER The Panel concluded unanimously that there was no evidence of a direct threat to national security in the objects sighted. Instances of "Foo Fighters" were cited. These were unexplained phenomena sighted by aircraft pilots during World War II in both European and Far East theaters of operation wherein "balls of light" would fly near or with the aircraft and maneuver rapidly. They were believed to be electrostatic (similar to St. Elmo's fire) or electromagnetic phenomena or possibly light reflections from ice crystals in the air, but their onset cause or nature was never defined. Both had been concerned in the investigation of these phenomena, but David T. Griggs (Professor of Geophysics at the University of California at Los Angeles) is believed to have been the most knowledgeable person on this subject. If the term "flying saucers" had been popular in 1943 - 1945, these objects would ## 25X1A
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. 53 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.