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This is the prepared statement James E. McDonald, a senior physicist at the University of Arizona's Institute of Atmospheric Physics, submitted to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics for its July 29, 1968 Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects. He draws on hundreds of witness interviews and weighs eight hypotheses. His conclusion is that UFOs are probably extraterrestrial surveillance devices. He argues that scientists have wrongly neglected the subject and urges much more scientific investigation and further Congressional hearings.
Discussion: Once again we deal with observed performance characteristics far beyond anything of which we have present knowledge: a wingless device that can hover, shoot straight up, and move fast enough to pass out of sight in a matter of a few seconds does not correspond to any known terrestrial craft. The official explanation was originally that Harris saw Venus. From astronomical data, one finds that Venus was in the Utah sky at noon in early October, but lay in the southwest, whereas everyone's line of sight to the southeast. Furthermore, Harris' statement that at one stage he viewed the disc against a distant mountain would contradict such an explanation. Finally, it is well known to astronomers that Venus, even at peak brilliance, is not very easily spotted in daytime, whereas he had no difficulty relocating it repeatedly as he flew. Menzel (Ref. 25) proposed that it was merely a sundog that Harris and the others were observing, and this was subsequently adopted as the official explanation. But sundogs (parhelia), for well-known reasons, occur at elevation angles equal to or slightly greater than the sun, which lay about 40 degrees above the southern horizon at noon in Salt Lake that day. Such a solar position would imply that a sundog might have lain to the southeast (22 degrees to the left of the sun) , but at an elevation angle that completely fails to match Harris' dead level viewing (against a distant mountain, to further embarrass the sundog hypothesis). Finally, to check the witness ' statements about cloud-free skies, I checked with the Salt Lake City Weather Bureau office, and their logs showed completely clear skies and 40 miles visibility. Sundogs cannot occur with out ice crystal clouds present. The only weather balloon released that morning was sent up at 10:00 a.m.; but, in any event, one would have to write off almost all of the observed details to propose that this incident was a misinterpretation of a weather balloon. As I see it, the 10/2/61 Salt Lake City sighting is just one more of the hundreds of very well-observed cases of machine-like craft exhibiting "flight performance" far beyond the state of our present-day technology. 4. Case 12, Larson AFB, Moses Lake, Washington, January 8, 1953: NICAP's recent publication of long-inaccessible official report summaries (Ref. 7) makes readily available to interested scientists a large number of fascinating UFO reports. Many are in the multiple witness category, for example, the dawn (0715 PST) sighting at Larson AFB where "Over sixty varied military and civilian sources observed one green disc-shaped object. The observations continued for fifteen minutes during which time the object moved in a southwesterly direction while bobbing vertically and going sideways. There was no sound. An F-94 aircraft was scrambled but a thirty minute search of the area produced negative intercept results." The official summary also notes that the "winds were generally from 240 degrees below an overcast at 12,000 ft. Thus the object would appear to move against the wind since it must have been below the clouds. there was no air traffic reported in the area." No radar sites in the area had unusual returns or activity, according to the same report. Discussion: This green disc, moving against the wind below an overcast and seen by over sixty witnesses, is an official Unidentified. 5. Case 13. Savannah River AEC Plant, Summer, 1952: A rather illuminating multiple-witness case was called to my attention by John A. Anderson, now at Sandia Base, New Mexico, but in 1952 working as a young engineer in the Savannah River AEC facility near Aiken, S.C. After a considerable amount of cross-checking on the part of both Anderson and myself, the date was inferred to be late July, 1952, probably 7/19/52. The circumstance giving a clue to the date was that, at about 10:00 a.m. on the day in question, Anderson, along with what he estimated at perhaps a hundred other engineers, scientists and technicians from his group were outside watching a "required attendance" skit presented from a truck-trailer and
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