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This section of FBI file 62-HQ-83894 collects Bureau correspondence and memoranda on flying saucers from 1952 to 1954. It holds letters from the public, which J. Edgar Hoover forwarded to the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations, and a 1952 teletype about a saucer-shaped light over the Savannah River Plant. It also includes an FBI Laboratory examination of the burned cap of scoutmaster D. S. DesVergers, which found no identifying residue, and instructions to field offices to refer disc reports to the Air Force.
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'. nn the retina and moviI1g as the eye ITIO\cS. • .. Other elements of tht: u.,,roblem were studied by such men as Dr. George Valley, a nuclear physicist at the Massa chusetts Institute of T echnology; staff members of the research firm of Rand Corporation; an assortment of physicists and aerodynamicists who specialize in the study of the stra tosphere and the •space beyond it; and the electronics ex I perts attached to the Cambridge Field 't'Station. T hese men were all searching ,•for physical rather than psychological explanations, and some fairly strange ,•' ,theories occurred to them-the possibil I ity that extraterrestrial animals were ' Aying into our atmosphere, for example. l' ( o data turned up to support that ar :resting idea.) The theory that the sau cers were hostile aircraft was carefully studied and rejected. "The perform ances of these saucers not only surpass the development of present science but the development of present fiction-sci ence writers," one scientist noted. The specialists also considered and rejected the concept of discs capable of riding the air on beams or rays of some kind. They even speculated on whether the anti gravity shield that H. G. \Velis thought up for his novel "The First Men in the Moon" would work; it wouldn't, they decided. T he supposition that interplan etnry craft were whizzing in at us was also discredited, despite its popularity with laymen. Space ships, the scientists thought, would have to be so large and un wieldy that they couldn't possibly zig zag as frivolously as the reported saucers did. Besides, a space ship, regardless of its size, could not, in the opinion of these men, carry sufficient fuel to remain for any length of time in the earth's dense atmosphere. The scientists noted, too, that the supposed spacemen showed a re markable lack of interest in the rest of the world, being, it would seem, almost unanimous in their desire to see A merica first. "The small area covered by the disc barrage points strongly to the belief that the flying objects are of earthly origin, be they physical or psycholog ical," one of the scientists reported. From the report turned in by the astronomers, I learned that they, in ad dition to seining out comets, meteors, bolides, and achondrites from the stream of objects people were seeing in the skies, had also thoughtfully con sidered our planetary neighbors. The old question of the possibility of life on f OA STORE Nt AR Mars took on a new urgency, and a new WRITE HAYMAK ER$ 8Y AVOH, [ corollary: If there arc living creatures • 1 WEST 3HH ST, H EW YC on Mars, would they be capable of TOllt S l:NO CHl:CK OR MONCY OltOUt 011111'.Cl"LY pap;e 75, 76 fbuilding space ships? The astronomers
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