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
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
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.