Documents / Report

Robertson Panel Report

The Black Vault · 1953 · 29 pages · text from the file's own layer

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.

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, Approved For Rel.e 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP81R00560R0.0030027-0
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from the center of the screen,-if it still appeared at all.
felt such a technical solution was simpler and would cost much less than
a "Doppler filter.rr
UNEXPLAINED COS!!EC RAY PHENOMENA
Two reported cases were examined: one at Palomar :Mountain, California,
in October 1949, when cosmic ray counter wnet "off •cale for a few seconds,n
a,pparently while a uvn of flying acmcers was observed visually; and t1vo,
a series of oboervations by the "Los Alamos Bird Watchers Association" from
August 1950 to January 1951, when cosmic ray coincidence counters behaved
queerly. Circuit diagrams and records were available for the latter, and
able quickly to point out that the recorded data were
undoubtedly due to inatrumental effects that would have been recognized
as such by more experienced observers~
The implication that radioactive effects ivere correlated with
unidentified flying objects in these two cases vms, therefore, rejected
by the Panel•
EDUCATIONAL PROGRAM
The Panel's concept of aborad educational program integrating
efforts of all concerned agencies was that it should have two major
aims: training and ttdebunking".
The training aim would result in proper recognition of unusually
illuminated objects (e.g., balloons, aircraft relfections) as well as
natural phenomena (meteors, fireballs, mirages, noctilucent clouds).
Both visual and radar recognition are concerned. There lvould be many
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Approved For Release 2001/08/07: CIA-RDP81R00560R000100030027-0
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Cases discussed

About this file

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.