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Symposium on unidentified flying objects: hearings before the Committee on Science and Astronautics, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninetieth Congress, second session, July 29, 1968.

U.S. House of Representatives · 1968-07-29 · 256 pages · text from the file's own layer

This is the printed record of a July 29, 1968 symposium on unidentified flying objects held by the Committee on Science and Astronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives, chaired by Rep. J. Edward Roush. The committee heard statements from six scientists: J. Allen Hynek, James E. McDonald, Carl Sagan, Robert L. Hall, James A. Harder and Robert M. L. Baker. It also printed papers from Donald Menzel, Stanton Friedman, Frank Salisbury and others. Hynek argued that puzzling UFO reports from competent witnesses deserve serious scientific study.

  • p. 21 …Secondly,I recommend that the United States seek the cooperation of the United Nations in establishing…
  • p. 113 …Finally, on the idea of UN cooperation, this had not occurred to me, but I think…
  • p. 127 …The third point would be the cooperation of the Air Force for logistics and high-speed…
  • p. 175 …He was cooperative and he gave the impression of wishing to be highly candid. Stream of…
  • p. 214 …Richard Hall, former assistant director of NICAP, cooperated in a study of the attitudes of persons…
168
He says he rarely gets angry because he doesn't like the feeling.
Once a man in a bar began saying insulting things to him, unprovoked, and then
took a swing at him but the bartender had intervened. He was just plain scared
in that situation and relieved when the tension had abated. A long time ago he
had felt like hitting his brother-in-law when the latter had said something or
other cruel to his sister (but instead had walked out of hearing range). He had
felt intensely, unexplicab4 angry for several days at age 16 when his father
died of a stroke; he remembers wishing he could destroy everything in sight by
kicking and pounding it to pieces.
He doesn't see himself as particularly depressed and has no suicidal
thoughts, although he acknowledges that after his mothers' death, he wished
he could have died with her or instead of her. He never has fantasied actively
taking his own life, however, and feels it would be very wrong to do so. He
does say he feels nervous a lot, especially in the last two months and that
certain things upset him more than they used to. For example, noisy laughter
at work or in a bar is so unpleasant lately that he Usually tries to find an
excuse to leave the room. He feels increasingly impatient, particularly in
waiting lines, and says he has jumped from smoking one to two packages of
cigarettes a day. For the first time in his life, he finds himself wishing he
could take a whiskey break in the middle of the work day; he then gets preoccu-
pied with the taste of whiskey and with thoughts of how good swallowing it would
feel.
After work, he always stops by a certain bar near the house and
has from two to five quiet bourbon and waters before returning home. Now, he
stays longer at the bar and arrives at the boarding house well past the dinner
hour. This is because he isn't hungry, usually, is sick of the food, and finds
the commotion at the dinner table disturbing. He does feel he is treated with
more respect and deference at the boarding house than he needs or deserves.
About his insomnia, he says simply that one pill helped until about a month ago
but that lately he has been taking four or five over a two-hour period with no
appreciable effect.
He claims he has no notion as to why he should be feeling on edge
for these two months, but in the next breath he begins to talk about his bank
boss's interest in acquainting him with his daughter. He uncomfortably des-
cribes a scene at the last Labor Day picnic in which the boss brought his
daughter around to meet him and then walked off, leaving him stranded with
her for the rest of the afternoon. Thereafter, some of the people at the bank
had teased him about his secret romance with her (which was non-existant). He
senses that his boss now seems less friendly, although the older man made no
known attempt to stop his promotion. He has no desire to advance any further
up the bank totem pole, says he never expected to do even this well, and would
be more than satisfied with his present post for the duration of his working
days (though he really liked doing bookkeeping better).
In addition to the information already mentioned, his developmental
history has the following other significant points: he was breast fed for nearly
two years because his mother couldn't afford to buy store milk. Toilet training
was completed by age 15 months, but he was eneuretic from age two until he was
nine. The boys in school found out about it and nicknamed him "Pee-pee".

Cases discussed

About this file

Hearing transcript, from the govinfo collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 256 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.