Documents / Report
This declassified CIA document, released through The Black Vault, reports on the meetings of the Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, which the Office of Scientific Intelligence convened on January 14 to 18, 1953. It includes a history of the sessions and the panel's informal comments, and it appends the formal report signed by H. P. Robertson and others. The panel found no evidence of a direct threat to national security. It recommended stripping UFOs of their special status and starting a public education program.
25X1A . Approved For Reise 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP81R00560Ra00030027-0 ~.J' ~'~'Moa have been so labeled. It was interesting that in at least two cases reviewed that the object sighted was categorized by as probably "Foo Fighters" to date unexplained but not dangerous; they were not happy thus to dismiss the sightings be calling them names. It 'lvas their feeling that these phenomena are 25X1A not beyond the domain of present knowledge of physical science, however. AIR FORCE REPORTING SYSTEM It was the Panel's opinion that some of the Air Force concern over U.F.O.'s (notwithstanding Air Defense Command anxiety over fast radar tracks) was probably caused by public pressure. The result today is that the Air·FOrce has instituted a fine channel for receiving reports of nearly anything anyone sees in the sky and fails to understand• This has been particularly encouraged in popu- lar articles on this and other subjects, such as space travel and science fiction. The result is the mass receipt of lo1-r-grade reports which tend to overload channels of communication with material quite irrelevant to hostile objects that might some day appear • The Panel agreed generally that this mass of poor-quality reports containing little, if any, scientific data was of no value. Quite the opposite, it was possibly dangerous in having a military service foster public concer-.a in "nocturnal meandering lights. 11 The implication being, since the interested agency 1ras military, that these objects were or might be potential direct threats to national security. Accord~ ingly, the need for deemphasization made itself apparent. Comments on a possible educational program are enumerated belmv ~ ~~w ~-!}~ Approved For Release 2001/08/07: G.~.:RDP81R00560R000100030027-0
Report, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 29 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.