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.

32
This
extends
down
to
the
limit
of
single
houses
losing
their
power
when
a
UFO
is
near.
The
hypothesis
in
the
case
of
car
stopping
is
that
there
might
be high magnetic
fields,
d.c.
fields,
which
saturate
the
core
and
thus prevent the
pulses
going through
the system
to
the
other
side.
Just
how
a
UFO
could
trigger
an
outage
on a
large
power
network
is
however
not
yet
clear.
But
this
is
a
disturbing
series
of
coincidences
that
I
think
warrant
much
more
attention
than
they
have
so far
received.
Mr. RYAN.
As
far as
you
know,
has
any
agency
investigated
the
New
York
blackout
in
relation
to
UFO?
Dr.
MCDONALD.
None
at
all.
When I
spoke
to
the
FPC
people,
I
was
dissatisfied
with the
amount
of
information
I
could
gain.
I am
saying
there
is
a
puzzling
and
slightly
disturbing coincidence
here.
I'm
not going
on
record as
saying,
yes,
these
are
clear-cut
cause
and
effect
relations.
I'm
saying
it
ought
to
be
looked
at.
There
is
no
one
looking at
this relation
between
UFO's
and
outages.
Mr.
RousTr.
Our
time
is
really
running
short,
Mr.
Ryan.
Mr.
RYAN.
One
final
question.
Do
you
think
it
is
imperative that
the
Federal
Power
Commission,
or Federal
Communications
Com-
mission,
investigate
the
relation
if
any
between
the
sightings
and
the
blackout?
Dr.
MCDONALD.
My
position
would
call
for
a somewhat
weaker
adjective.
I'd
say
extremely
desirable.
Mr.
Ro
-
crsH.
Thank
you.
Thank
you,
Dr. McDonald.
PREPARED STATEMENT ON
UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS
James E.
McDonald,
Senior
Physicist, Institute
of
Atmospheric
Physics,
and
Professor,
Department
of Meteorology,
The
University
of
Arizona,
Tucson,Arizona
INTRODUCTION
I
should
like
first
to
commend
the
House
Committee on
Science
and
Astronautics
for
recognizing
the
need
for
a
closer
look
at
scientific
aspects
of the
long-stand-
ing
puzzle
of the
Unidentified
Flying Objects
(UFOs). From
time
to
time
in
the
history
of
science, situations
have
arisen in
which
a
problem of
ultimately
enormous
importance
went
begging for
adequate
attention
simply because that
problem appeared
to involve
phenomena
so
far
outside
the current
bounds
of
scientific
knowledge
that
it
was
not even regarded
as
a
legitimate subject
of
serious
scientific
concern.
That
is precisely
the
situation
in
which
the
UFO
prob-
lem
now
lies.
One
of the
principal results
of
my
own
recent
intensive
study ofthe
UFO
enigma
is
this:
I
have become
convinced that the
scientific
community,
not
only in
this
country but throughout the world,
has
been
casually ignoring
as
nonsense
a
matter of
extraordinary
scientific
importance.
The
attention
of
your Committee
can,
and
I
hope
will,
aid greatly in correcting this situation.
As
you
will
note in the
following,
my
own
present opinion,
based
on
two
years
of
careful study,
is
that
UFOs
are probably
extraterrestrial
devices
engaged
in
something
that
might
very
tentatively
be termed
"surveillance."
If the
extraterrestrial
hypothesis
is
proved
correct
(and
I
emphasize
that thepresent evidence only
points in that
direction
but cannot be
said to
constitute
irrefutable
proof), then
clearly
UFOs
will
become
a
top
-priority
scientific
prob-
lem.
I
believe
you might
agree
that,
even
if
there
were
a
slight
chance of the
correctness
of that hypothesis, the
UFOs
would
demand
the
most
careful atten-tion.
In
fact,
that chance seems
to
some
of us
a
long
way
from
trivial.
We
sharethe view of Vice
Adm. R. H.
Hillenkoetter,
former
CIA
Director,
who
said eight
years ago, "It
is
imperative that
we
learn
where
the
UFOs
come from and what
their
purpose
is
(Ref. 1)"
Since your Committee
is
concerned not only with broadaspects of our
national
scientific
program but
also with the prosecution of our
entire space program, and
since that space program has been
tied in for
some