Documents / Hearing transcript
This is an excerpt from the record of the April 5, 1966 House Armed Services Committee hearing on UFOs, which the Internet Archive holds. It includes correspondence about the September 3, 1965 Exeter, New Hampshire sighting involving Raymond E. Fowler, Project Blue Book and the Exeter police officers, plus a letter on the matter from Minority Leader Ford. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, Major Hector Quintanilla and Secretary Harold Brown testify. They say the police officers' observation remains unidentified and that no radar data or jet scrambles were involved.
6053 an illuminating example of how the Air Force deals with the public in such a situation. By good fortune, one does not have to rely mainly on newspaper reports, some- times meager, or upon the Air Force statements. The Department of Public Safety 0 the State of Oklahoma has sent to the office of Congressman John Jar- man, Den'ocrat, of the Oklahoma City congressional district, and to the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in Washington a sum- mary of *he teletype reports sent into the Oklahoma Highway Patrol Communi- cations Network Center, July 31-August 5, from the various highway patrol headquarters over the State. This valuable document, which was not observed in the files of Project Blue Book, will be utilized In one or more following articles dealing with the curious behavior of the Air Force touching the UFO's and the public. [From the Portland (Maine) Evening Express, Jan. 18. 19661 TitOSE FLYING SAUCERS-HIGHWAY PATROL REPORT FIRES CONTROVERSY OVER UFO's (Editor's note: This Is the second of a series about UFO's (unidentified flying objects) by Bulkley S. Griffin, executive editor of the Evening Express Washing- ton Bureau. He wrote the stories after visiting the UFO office of the U.S. Air Force.) (By Bulkley Griffift) WASHINOTON, D.C.-Research Into the matter of the unidentified flying ob- jects (UFO's), the U.S, Air Force, and the public, receives substantial help from a report furnished by the"Oklahoma Department of Public Safety. This sum- marizes the messages deailig with UFO sightings that passed over the Okla- homa Highway Patrol network in' the period July 31-August 5. A survey of this infoirimAtion reveals the large number of sightings and the much larger nuitber of witnesses of those sightings, and lists some radar sight- ings by the Air Force. It compares with a generalized attill61Oi to- those sight- ings by the Air Force and Project Blue Book, the latter the name for the Air Force investigation of UFO's. At 3:30 p.m. August 2, Project Blue Book issued a statement assuming to ex- plain the avalanche of UFO sightings that had lilt the Southwest-but probably had hit Oklahoma the heaviest-starting July 31. Therefore, this article will seek to hit the high 'points of the sightings reported on the Oklahoma Highway Patrol network beginning with July 31, up to the issuance of the Project Blue Book explanation. The first report on the teletype came the early morning of July 31. A Wynne- wood, Okla., police officer, Louis Sikes, reported a UFO. The radar at Tinker Air Force Base located the object. A little later, continued the highway patrol report, "Caswell Air Force Base (Fort Worth, Tex.) aimed their idar at the same location and came up with the same fix as Tinker." Both Tinker and Caswell followed the object, which once disappeared and then reapeared, for some time. Later that day an Associated Press dispatch from Oklahoma City stated flatly that Tinker and Caswell both had the UFO on radar. The next night saw the UFO reports crowding the highway patrol teletype. Some quotations of messages will be given. At 9:19 p.m. the highway patrol tower sent out this message: "Since 8 p.m. the tower has received in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 visual sightings, many by police officers and highway patrol troopers of various unidentified flying objects from the Purcell area north through the Norman area to Chandler and back through Meeker and Shawnee. "Three Shawnee officers and their captAiln have four of the objects in sight at this time, also another has cropped up from the south of Tecumseh and Is apparently going to fly directly over Shawnee. "The sightings vary from one to four of the objects at various times starting in a reddish color atid varying toa white and blue luster. "Shawnee reports the objects seem to be flying four to a formation In a diamond-type formation. Cushing has reported four of the objects. Oklahoma Highway Patrol Units 30 and 40 have also made visual sightings. Reports have
Hearing transcript, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 37 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.