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
195 as far as UFO's are concerned. They have included Air Force generals and Army generals, and usually they display a great interest. Some- times they will say, I don't believe, but my wife does; some will say. The other day I was engaged in a colloquy over on the floor of the House, not a part of the record, but just as a side conversation, with two of my colleagues who sit on this committee. (At this point, discussion was off the record.) Mr. RousH. Back on the record. As a result of my experience on this committee I have been privi- leged to visit the tracking stations which NASA has throughout the world. Each place I have visited I have asked the question, "Have you tracked any unidentified flying object?" Well, it is obvious they apparently don't have the ability to track, but the response was "No," everywhere except in South Africa. Then they said, 'Anything we track, which we do not understand, we turn over to the Department of Defense," inferring there were some things they did not understand. The same is true with those places in the world where there is aBaker -Nunn camera. I asked the same question of them. For the most part there was a boundless curiosity, but a negative response. Dr. HYNEK. I might respond to that, of course, in talking to them, you have represented officialdom, and they may themselves be a little afraid to say anything to a Congressman that might get them intotrouble. But I get reports subrosa that are to the effect that people ; trackers, and so forth, have seen things, but they would not dare think of re- porting it. Now, that is hearsay. I am sorry it is not hearsay; it has happened to me. But it is not what I would call "solid evidence." Mr. Rousx. Just one other comment. I serve on the board of trustees of a college back in Indiana. In the course of a year they had numerous lectures by outstandin* people in their lecture series, quite outstandingpeople on various subjects, but they scheduled one lecture given by a student at the college on unidentified flying objects. Needless to say, he had the best attendance of the entire series. Dr. Harder. Dr. HARDER. Following on something that Dr. Hynek said about the small percentage of actual sightings that are reported, this would suggest that the two instances that I brought out, which to my knowl- e are the only extant pieces of what you might call scientific information—information containing information of a scientific nature, might well be multiplied by a factor of 10, if it were not forthis ridicule bit, and furthermore, if it were not the subject of ridicule, many _people would perhaps take greater care in the observations that they do make, and perhaps come up with similar kinds of anecdotal nature of somewhat more importance than just flashing lights. For instance, the plane of polarization or—well, many kinds ofobservations came to us. We would have even at this point far moreanecdotal information of a scientific nature and of scientific impor- tance than we now have. Mr. RousH. I think those of you who have sat on this panel today have made perhaps a greater contribution than you realize in adding
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.