Documents / Hearing transcript
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.
“Nevers”43 pages
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".
Hearing transcript, from the govinfo collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 256 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.