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.

33
years now with the dramatic goal of a search for life in the universe, I submit
that the topic of today's Symposium is eminently deserving of your attention.
Indeed, I have to state, for the record, that I believe no other problem within
your jurisdiction is of comparable scientific and national importance. Those are
strong words,and I intend them to be.
In addition to your Committee responsibilities with respect to science and the
aerospace programs, there is another still broader basis upon which it is highly
appropriate that you now take up the UFO problem: Twenty years of public
interest, public puzzlement, and even some public disquiet demand that we all
push toward early clarification of this unparalleled scientific mystery. I hope that
our session here today will prove a significant turning point, orienting new
scientific efforts towards illumination of this scientific problem that has been
with us for over 20 years.
SCOPE AND BACKGROUND OF PRESENT COMMENTS
It has been suggested that I review for you my experiences in interviewing
UFO witnesses here and abroad and that I discuss ways in which my professional
experience in the field of atmospheric physics and meteorology illuminates past
and present attempts at accounting for UFO phenomena. To understand the basis
of my comments, it may be helpful to note briefly the nature of my own studies
on UFOs.
I have had a moderate interest in the UFO problem for twenty years, much
as have a scattering of other scientists. In southern Arizona, during the period
1956-66, I interviewed, on a generally rather random basis, witness in such
local sightings as happened to come to my attention via press or personnal com-
munications. This experience taught me much about lay misinterpretations of
observations of aircraft, planets, meteors, balloons, flares, and the like. The
frequency with which laymen misconstrue phenomena associated with fireballs
(meteors brighter than magnitude —5), led me to devote special study to
meteor physics; other topics in my own field of atmospheric physics also drew
my closer attention as a result of their bearing on various categories of UFO
reports. This period of rather casual UFO-witness interviewing on a local basis
proved mainly educational; yet on a few occasions I encountered witnesses of
seemingly high credibility whose reports lay well outside any evident metero-
logical, astronomical, or other conventional bounds. Because I was quite unaware,
before 1966, that those cases were, in fact, paralleled by astonishing numbers of
comparable cases elsewhere in the U.S. and the rest of the world, they left me only
moderately puzzled and mildly bothered, since I came upon relatively few im-
pressive cases within the environs of Tucson in those dozen years of discursive
study. I was aware of the work of non-official national investigative groups like
NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) and APRO
(Aerial Phenomena Research Organization) ; but lacking basis for detailed per-
sonal evaluation of their investigative methods, I simply did not take their
publications very seriously. I was under other misimpressions, I found later, as
to the nature of the official UFO program, but I shall not enlarge on this before
this Commitee. (I cite all of this here because I regard it relevant to an apprecia-
tion, by the Committee, of the way in which at least one scientist has developed
his present strong concern for the UFO problem, after a prior period of some
years of only mild interest. Despite having interviewed a total of perhaps 150--
200 Tucson-area witnesses prior to 1966 (75 of them in a single inconclusive
case in 1958), I was far from overwhelmed with the importance of the UFO
problem.
A particular sighting incident in Tucson in early 1966, followed by the widely-
publicized March, 1966, Michigan sightings (I, too, felt that the "swamp gas"
explanation was quite absurd once I checked a few relevant points), led me
finally to take certain steps to devote the coming summer vacation months to a
much closer look at the UFO problem. Within only a few weeks in May and
June of 1966, after taking a close look at the files and modes of operation of both
private and official (i.e., Project Bluebook) UFO investigative programs, after
seeing for the first time press-clipping files of (to me) astonishing bulk, cover-
ing innumerable intriguing cases I had never before heard of, and (above all)
after the beginning of what became a long period of personal interviewing of
key witnesses in important UFO cases, I rapidly altered my conception of the
scientific importance of the UFO question. By mid-1966, I had already begun
what became months of effort to arouse new interest and to generate new UFO
investigative programs in various science agencies of the Federal government