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.
“The Advance”52 pages
200 for the entire life history of our solar system. The number of habitable planets in the universe is anybody's guess. Any figures you may have heard, including mine, are just guesses. I have guessed that our own Milky Way may contain as many as a million such planets. That sounds like a lot, but the chances are the nearest such inhabited planet would be so distant that if we send out a message to it today we should have to wait some 2000 years for a reply. Alas, the evidence is poor for intelligent life in our solar system, though I do expect some lower forms of life to exist on Mars. With respect to UFO's my position is simply this. That natural explanations exist for the unexplained sightings. The Air Force has given me full access to their files. There is no vast conspiracy of either the Air Force or CIA to conceal the facts from the public, as some groups have charged. The basic reason for continued reporting of UFO's lies in the possibility—just the pos- sibility mind you—that some of them may derive from experimentation or secret development by a hostile power. And I don't mean hostile beings from outer space! The Air Force has made its mistakes. They never have had enough sCientists in the project. They have failed to follow up certain sightings of special im- portance. Their questionnaire is amateurish, almost cleverly designed in cer- tain cases to get the wrong answer and lose track of the facts. The Air Force is aware of my criticism and, on a voluntary basis, I have helped them im- prove the questionnaire. It was not an easy job. Especially when the Air Force rejected some vital questions as "an invasion of the privacy of the individual." From 1947 until 1954 a bewildered group of Air Force personnel tried hon- estly and sincerely to resolve the UFO problem. Many highly reliable persons had reported seeing "objects" moving at fantastic speeds, and apparently taking evasive action in a manner impossible for known . terrestrial craft. By 1952 a sizable number of those in the Air Force group had concluded that extrater- restrial vehicles were the only explanation. Some of this unrest leaked out. Popular writers exploited these ideas and soon various UFO clubs came intoexistence. In 1953, a committee of scientists, headed by the late H. P. Robert- son of California Institute of Technology met at CIA to consider a number ofthe Air Force's most convincing cases. They immediately solved many of them.Others could not be solved because of poor or insufficient data. They concludedthat all cases had a natural solution. There was no evidence to support theidea that UFO's are vehicles from another world. Nevertheless, the UFO buffs believe, almost as an article of faith, that "trained observers," such as military or airline pilots, could not possibly mistake a meteor, a planet, a star, a sundog, or a mirage for a UFO. This viewpoint is absolutely nonsense and the Air Force files bear witness to its falsity! They contain thousands of solved cases—sightings by "reliable individuals" like the pilots: But such persons have made huge errors in identification. A huge meteor flashes in the sky! The co-pilot thinks it is going to strike the plane and takes evasive action. The pilot disagrees and he is right. The UFO proves to be a fireball or meteor a hundred miles away! Such occurrences are frequent, not rare. They have even increased with the growing number of re-entries and spectacular decay of satellite debris from the space operations of the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. Distances overhead are uncommonly hard to estimate—either on the groundor in the air. A bird's feather, shining brightly in the sun and floating a mere 20 feet overhead may seem to be a distant object moving at very high speed. Conversely, a pilot may think that a bright object on the horizon, in reality a star or planet, lies just beyond his wing tip. Sometimes, a layer of warm air, sandwiched between 2 layers of cold air, can act as a lens, projecting a pulsing, spinning, vividly colored, saucer -like image of a• planet. Pilots, thinking they were dealing with a nearby flying object, have often tried to intercept the image, which evades all attempts to cut it off. The distance may seem to change rapidly, as the star fades or increases in brightness. Actual "dog fights" have been recorded between a confused military pilot and a planet. I myself have observed this phenomenon of star mirage. It is both realistic and frightening. Such observations fortified the UFO legend—that these objects "maneuver as if under intelligent control." But the pilots failed to realize that the "intelligent control" came from within themselves. And I think that Air Force personnel of Project Blue Book still do not appreciate this important UFO phenomenon.
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.