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.
“Cooper”3 pages
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# Approved For Release 2004/03/26 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100040001-7 SECRET Security Information (a study in the psychology of panic, written about the famous Oran Welles radio broadcast in 1938) and has since performed advanced laboratory studies in the field of perception. The names of Don Macquarie (University of Michigan) and Lee Rosten were mentioned as possibly suitable as consultant psychologists. Also, someone familiar with news communication techniques, perhaps an advertising expert, would be helpful. Arthur Godfrey was mentioned as possibly a valuable channel of communication reaching a mass audience of certain levels. Suggested the U. S. Navy (OER) Special Devices Center, Sand Point, L. I. as a potentially valuable organization to assist in such an educational program. The teaching techniques used by this agency for aircraft identification during the past war was cited as an example of a similar educational task. The Jam Early Co. which made World War II training films (notion picture and slide strips) was also suggested, as well as Walt Disney, Inc. animated cartoons. Suggested that the amateur astronomers in the U. S. might be a potential source of enthusiastic talent "to spread the gospel". It was believed that business clubs, high schools, colleges, and television stations would all be pleased to cooperate in the showing of documentary type motion pictures if prepared in an interesting manner. The use of true cases showing first the "mystery" and then the "explanation" would be forceful. To plan and execute such a program, the Panel believed was no mean task. The current investigatory group at ATC would, of necessity, have to be closely integrated for support with respect to not only 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. 53 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.