FBI file 62-HQ-83894, section 7

..- .' .
fore. '7:L. off," hes: ,f:a Russians
have nothing to do so-called
• I
saucers· I'll swear t(. "'"' 1 a stack of
Bibles,' if you like. Sec ond, we. don't
have any secret new t)"I' -es of aircraft
that could have started all 1 ~his commo
tion. Third, nobody, in ourc .pinion, has
spotted space ships fro~ s ome_ othe_r
planet. Fourth, everything our investl
o-ators learned has been made available
0
to the publ.1c."
T HE first saucer iro,cident occurred
on the afternQ<''n of J une 24, 1947,
when Kenneth Ar,nold, on a business
trip for a Boise, Idatho, firm that makes
1 fire-control equipr ent, was flying his
p..,~.i\'C•., .roe from ' .:::h~halis, vVashing
ton to Yakima, \~ /ashmgton. The re
fle;tion of a brigt 1t fl ash on one wing
\ caught his eye. J- . l e turned and, at a
distance he tho ught was about twenty
miles saw what he took to be nine tail
less ~ircraft hr ,ading toward Mount
Rainier «T ._ _could see their outli~es quite
\ : .•only against the snow," Air Force
Intelligence quoted him as saying.
"They flew very close to the mountain
tops, directly south to southeast, down
the hog's-back of the range, flying like
geese, in a diagonal, chainlike line, as
if they were linked together ... a chain
of saucerlike things at least five miles
long, swerving in and out of the high
mountain peaks. They were flat ... and
so shiny that they reflected fireworks display. Dr. Paulthe sun like a mirror." Ar Fitts, an Ohio State Uninold said he watched the
saucers for three minutes versity psychologist who
was for a time attached toand estimated their speed at
ahout twelve hundred miles Project Saucer, considered
this crowded condition inan hour. the holiday skies the resultAir Force technicians,
consulted by newspaper- of mass suggestibility, the
• men, said that any object same jumpy trait that
caused Americans to seemoving that fast would be
invisible to the nakeo eye at Zeppelins overhead during
and after the First '\VorldArnold's estimated distance.
The press scoffed at Ar War. "Our graphs ~how
that saucer incidents alnold's story, and he was re
sentful. "Even if I see a ways increase dramatically
ten-story building flying after publicity," he has
through the air, I won't since told me. "The sky,
say a word about it," he de you know, has been a
clared, and when he got
hack to Boise he wrote a series of ar
ticles about his experience for a mag
azine called Fate.
No sooner were the skeptical news
paper accounts printed than dozens of
people turned up with similar re
ports. Another resident of Boise spotted
a disc over that city, "a half circle in
shape, clinging to a cloud and just as
bright and silvery-looking as a mirror
caught in the rays of the sun." Lieu-
": ' " --tenant G overnor Donal<. A ,1t.-~
.of Idabo, disclosed that .. \if": he
had seen a comet-shaped uojec, l1ling
over the western p.:trt of the state. It
finally dipped below the horizon, he
said. (Later on, the personnel of Proj
ect Saucer decided that the Lieutenant
G overnor had been looking at either
Saturn or Mercury.) Four cops in P ort
land, Oregon, saw a group of discs
"wobbling, disappearing, and reappear
ing."
Reports of other phenomena having
been seen in the skies appeared in the
papers almost daily. Two Army officers
at Fort Richardson, Alaska, reported
seeing a spherical object flying through
the air at incredible speed and leav
ing no vapor trail; some fishermen off
Newfoundland saw a series of aerial
flashes, silver to reddish in color; a lady
in Oregon watched a group of saucers
spell out "P-E-P-S-r," and alerted her
neighbors to the presence of foreign
agents practicing a secret code in our
skies; an Oklahoma City man saw a
saucer "the bulk of six B-29s;" and
a prospector in the Cascade Moun
tains of Oregon saw six saucers in a
group, banking in the sun-"round,
silent, and not flying in formation ." On
the Fourth of July, there were twelve
reports of saucers in widely separated
parts of the United States. One of
these saucers, sighted at Trenton, New
Jersey, was traced to a
source of exciting visions
from time immemorial, and its attrac
tion is particularly strong in our jittery
moments."
FROM the beginning, the officers in
charge of Project Saucer recognized
a peculiar difficulty in their assignment.
"H you look out the window and see
something, how can I prove or disprove
what it was if I didn't see it and you
can't tell me much about what you
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