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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.

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24
don't
get
on
the
wires,
because in
the
present
climate
of
the
opinion,
wire
editors, like
scientists,
Congressmen,
and
the
public
at
large,
feel
sure
there
is
nothing
to
all
this,
and
they
don't
put
them on
the
wires.
You
have
to
go
right to
the
local
town
to
get
press
coverage
in
most
cases.
The
Redlands,
February
1968,
case
illustrates
that
very
well.
Once
in
a
while
a
case
will
get
on
the
wires
and
receive
national
attention,
but
by and
large,
one
just doesn't
read
about
these cases
in
other parts
of
the country,
because
wire
services
don't
carry
them.
Let
me
tell
you
another
case
that
answers
the
questions:
"Why
aren't
there
multiple witnesses?"
"Why
aren't
they
seen
in
cities?"
"Why
aren't
these
ever
seen in
the
daytime?"
It
is
true
that
there
is
a
preponderance of
nighttime
sights.
Maybe
this
is
merely a matter
of
luminosity.
It
is
also
true
that
there
seem
to
be
more
reports
from
rather
re-
mote
areas,
say
desert
areas
or
swampy
areas,
than
in
the
middle of
cities.
But
there
are
city
observations.
And
it
is
also
true there
are
more
individual witness
cases
than
sightings
by
large
crowds.
But
in
every
instance
there
are
striking
exceptions to
this.
In
New
York
City,
on
November
22, 1966,
a
total
of
eight
witnesses,
members
of
the
staff
of
the
American Newspaper
Publishers
Associa-
tion,
were
the
witnesses
in
a
good
case.
I
interviewed
William
Leick,
of
that
staff,
the
manager
of
the
office
there.
I
heard about
it
through
a
NICAP
report.
It
did
not
appear
in the
papers, as
I
will
mention.
William
Leick
had
been looking out
the
window, saw an
object
overthe
U.N.
building.
It
was
hovering,
and
as
he
talked
to
a
colleague
he
realized
there
was
something
odcf
about
it,
so
they
walked out
on
the
terrace.
Soon
they
had
six
others
out
on
the
terrace.
This
was
at
4
:30
in the
afternoon.
It
was
kind
of
a
cushion-shaped
object,
as
he
de-
scribed
it,
and had no
wings. It
was
rocking
a
little
from
time
to
time,blinked in
the afternoon
sun a
little
bit,
had
kind of
an
orange glow.
All
eight
were
watching,
and
after
it
hovered for
several
moments
it
rose
vertically
and
then took
off
at
high
speed.
There
is
an example
of
midtown
sighting in
New
York
where
the
witnesses
are
staff
mem-
bers
of
a
responsible organization.
Leick,
himself,
had
been
trained
in
intelligence,
in
World
War
II.
There
is
no
reason at
all
to
think
he
and
his colleagues
would
invent
this.
They
did
call
a
New
York
paper,but
:to
say they
weren't
the
least bitinterested.
There
was no
report published in
a
New
York
paper.
Next
they
called
a
local
Air Force
office
but
no
one
came
to
investigate
it.
It
came
to
my
attention
because
one of the
members
of
the
staff
knew
of
NICAP
and
sent
NICAP
a
report.
This
sort
of thing has happened
over
and
over again.
The
ridiculelid
keeps
these
out of
sight; too
many
of
them
are occurring to delay
any
longer in getting at
this
problem with
all
possible
scientific
assistance.
A
famous
multiple-witness instance occurred in
Farmington,
N.
Mex.,
on March
17,1950.
I
interviewed seven witnesses there.
A
verylarge
number
of
objects
were
involved.
There were
several different
groups of
objects,
all
described as
disc
-shaped
objects.
They
were ex-
plained as
Skyhook
balloons,
officially,
so
I
checked into that.
I
finally established that there
was no Skyhook
balloon released
anywhere
in the United States
on or near that day.
The
witnesses in-

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.