Documents / Document
This NICAP compilation by Dan Wilson gathers Project Blue Book records on the sighting of 24 February 1959, when American Airlines Flight 139, flying from Newark to Detroit, and two United Airlines crews saw three lights over Pennsylvania and Ohio. It includes the record card, pilot statements, Air Force letters and correspondence with an Akron UFO committee. The Air Force concluded that the lights came from three B-47s refueling from KC-97 tankers. Book excerpts disputing Captain Killian's later claims are also included.
“The Pentagon”4 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
December 27, 1949 Air Force Press Release: "The Air Force has discontinued its special project of investigating and evaluating reported flying saucers. The reports are the result of misinterpretation of various conventional objects, a mild form of mass hysteria, and hoaxes, and continuance of the project is unwarranted." ## December 29, 1949 Declassified Air Force secret summaries of Intelligence investigations of UFOs: "It will never be possible to say with certainty that any individual did not see a space ship, an enemy missile, or some other object." Discussing the motives of possible visitors from space, the Intelligence report also stated: "Such a civilization might observe that on earth we now have atomic bombs and are fast developing rockets. In view of the past history of mankind, they should be alarmed. We should therefore expect at this time above all to behold such visitations." ## February 22, 1950 Air Force Headquarters statement after a Navy visual and radar tracking report of two UFOs at Key West Naval Air Station: "There is absolutely no evidence that flying saucers exist." ## March 22, 1950 Air Force statement after the published flying saucer report by Commander (now Captain) R. B. McLaughlin, U.S.N., then officer in charge of Navy guided missile tests at White Sands Proving Grounds. This report, cleared by Security and Review at the Pentagon, described several UFO sightings at White Sands, including the report of an elliptical object over 100 feet long tracked at 18,000 miles per hour at an altitude of 56 miles. Air Force comment when queried about this Navy report: We have no evidence that the flying saucers are other than hallucinations, hoaxes, and errors in identification. ## January and February, 1951 Air Force statements: "We have no evidence that such objects exist; In general, such reports are hallucinations, mistakes, hoaxes or natural phenomena." ## June 24, 1951 Air Force statement given to Look magazine by an ATIC colonel: "These reports come from sincere people; they are not crackpots. They are seeing something: we have to find out what." From this date on the Air Force has consistently clouded pertinent UFO information to such an extent that legislative bodies as well as the public in general are still confused. It is easily seen how the Air Force has obscured the real UFO issue by throwing first hot and then cold water on the subject. Is it any wonder the public is now faced with a "controversial subject"? It is either a case of deliberately confusing the public or that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing The Air Force found itself struggling with the problem of wha to tell the public after the tremendous surge in sightings by highly trained observers. It could either reveal its evidence that the UFO's were real, and probably interplanetary, or it could brush off the reports as being worthless. The latter policy was chosen and it remains in force to this day. Why? In twelve years the Air Force has been attacked and charged many times with "cover up "misleading statements", "censorship". and "criminal negligence" in dealing with UFO's. Isn't it time this situation came to a focus?
Document, 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. 83 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.