Documents / Memo
This CIA file, released in 2001, gathers 1952 memoranda from H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of the Office of Scientific Intelligence, to the Director of Central Intelligence, along with draft letters to the Secretary of Defense and the NSC and a briefing on the Air Force position. It concludes that flying saucers carry national security implications, namely mass panic and air defense vulnerability. It recommends expanded scientific research, a public information policy and study of Soviet interest, noting that about 20 percent of roughly 1500 Air Force reports remained unexplained.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100020012-7 In the next few minutes, I intend to touch briefly upon the official explanations of the great majority of sightings of unidentified flying objects (or UFO's) and mention possible phenomena which may account for some of the open cases. Before we elaborate upon the current explanations I would like you to keep in mind certain facts which are generally common to all reports. First, is the earnestness of those making reports. These people are certain that they have seen something. Secondly, objects sighted almost always are reported to be against the sky thereby providing no point of reference. Thirdly, without a reference point, a valid estimation of size, speed, distance of relative motion is virtually impossible. Finally, no debris or material evidence has ever been recovered following an unexplained sighting. In each case of reported sightings exists the personal element. This is the combined effect of psychological and physiological factors which
Memo, 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. 36 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.