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
• 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-
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.