James E. McDonald statement, Symposium on UFOs, House Committee on Science and Astronautics

If the extraterrestrial hypothesis is proved correct (and I emphasize that the present evidence only points in that
direction but cannot be said to constitute irrefutable proof), then clearly UFOs will become a top-priority scientific
problem. I believe you might agree that, even if there were a slight chance of the correctness of that hypothesis, the
UFOs would demand the most careful attention. In fact, that chance seems to some of us a long way from trivial. We
share the view of Vice Adm. R. H. Hillenkoetter, former CIA Director, who said eight years ago, "It is imperative
that we learn where the UFOs come from and what their purpose is." (Ref. 1) Since your committee is concerned
only with broad aspects of our national scientific program but also with the prosecution of our entire space program,
and since that space program has been tied in for some years now with the dramatic goal of a search for life in the
universe, I submit that the topic of today's Symposium is eminently deserving of your attention. Indeed, I have to
state, for the record, that I believe no other problem within your jurisdiction is of comparable scientific and national
importance. Those are strong words, and I intend them to be.
In addition to your Committee responsibilities with respect to science and the aerospace programs, there is another
still broader basis upon which it is highly appropriate that you now take up the UFO problem: Twenty years of
public interest, public puzzlement, and even some public disquiet demand that we all push toward early clarification
of this unparalleled scientific mystery. I hope that our session here today will prove a significant turning point,
orienting new scientific efforts towards illumination of this scientific problem that has been with us for over 20
years.
SCOPE AND BACKGROUND OF PRESENT COMMENTS:
It has been suggested that I review for you my experiences in interviewing UFO witnesses here and abroad and that
I discuss ways in which my professional experience in the field of atmospheric physics and meteorology illuminates
past and present attempts at accounting for UFO phenomena. To understand the basis of my comments, it may be
helpful to note briefly the nature of my own studies on UFOs.
I have had a moderate interest in the UFO problem for twenty years, much as have a scattering of other scientists. In
southern Arizona, during the period 1954-66, I interviewed, on a generally rather random basis, witnesses in such
local sightings as happened to come to my attention via press or personal communications. This experience taught
me much about lay misinterpretations of observations of aircraft, planets, meteors, balloons, flares, and the like. The
frequency with which laymen misconstrue phenomena associated with fireballs (meteors brighter than magnitude -
5), led me to devote special study to meteor physics; other topics in my own field of atmospheric physics also drew
my closer attention as a result of their bearing on various categories of UFO reports. This period of rather casual
UFO-witness interviewing on a local basis proved mainly educational; yet on a few occasions I encountered
witnesses of seemingly high credibility whose reports lay well outside any evident meteorological, astronomical, or
other conventional bounds. Because I was quite unaware, before 1966, that those cases were, in fact, paralleled by
astonishing numbers of comparable cases elsewhere in the U.S. and the rest of the world, they left me only
moderately puzzled and mildly bothered, since I came upon relatively few impressive cases within the environs of
Tucson in those dozen years of discursive study. I was aware of the work of non-official national investigative
groups like NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) and APRO (Aerial Phenomena
Research Organization); but lacking basis for detailed personal evaluation of their investigative methods, I simply
did not take their publications very seriously. I was under other misimpressions, I found later, as to the nature of the
official UFO program, but I shall not enlarge on this before this Committee. (I cite all of this here because I regard it
relevant to an appreciation, by the Committee, of the way in which at least one scientist has developed his present
strong concern for the UFO problem after a prior period of some years of only mild interest. Despite having
interviewed a total of perhaps 150-200 Tucson-area witnesses prior to 1966 (75 of them in a single inconclusive case
in 1958), I was far from overwhelmed with the importance of the UFO problem.
A particular sighting incident in Tucson in early 1966, followed by the widely-publicized March, 1966, Michigan
sightings (I, too, felt, the "swamp gas" explanation was quite absurd once I checked a few relevant points), led me
finally to take certain steps to devote the coming summer vacation months to a much closer look at the UFO
problem. Within only a few weeks in May and June of 1966, after taking a close look at the files and modes of
operation of both private and official (i.e. Project Bluebook) UFO investigative programs, after seeing for the first
time press-clipping files of (to me) astonishing bulk, covering innumerable intriguing cases I had never before heard
of, and (above all) after the beginning of what became a long period of personal interviewing of key witnesses in
important UFO cases, I rapidly altered my conception of the scientific importance of the UFO question. By mid-
1966, I had already begun what became months of effort to arouse new interest and to generate new UFO