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.

53
east.
It
then hovered
a
short
time
and
moved
off
with
acceleration
to
the
northwest.
Di8C2188i071,—The
Redlands
University
trio
inquired
concerning
radar
detection,
but
were
informed
that
the
nearest
radar
was
at
March
AFB,
Riverside,
and
the
beam
clearing
intervening
ridges
could
not
detect
so
low
a
target
over
Redlands.
An
interesting
aspect of
press
coverage
of
UFOs, a
very
characteristic
aspect,
is
illustrated
here.
The
local
Redlands
-area
papers
carried
only short
pieces
on
the
event;
beyond
that
no
press
coverage
occurred,
as
far
as
I
have
been
able
to
ascertain.
Evidently
even
the
state
wires
did
not
carry
it.
(I
think
this
fact deserves
verystrong
emphasis.
One
has
to
see
national
clipping
-service
coverage,
drawing upon
many
small-town
papers,
to
gain
even
a
dim
glimpse
of
the
astonishing
number
of
UFO
reports
that
occur
steadily,
but
go
unreported
on
state
and
national
wires
so
that
none
but
very
diligent
UFO
investigators
have
any
appreciation
of
the
true
frequency of
UFO
sightings.
This
is
no
"press
clampdown",
no
censorship;
wire
editors
simply
"know"
that
there's
nothing
to
all
this
nonsense
about
UFOs.
A
local
story
will
be
run
simply
for
its
local
interest,
but
that
interest
falls off
steeply
with
radial distance
from
the
observation
site.)
Thus,
we
must
confront
a
situation,
developed
over
20
years,
in
which
over
a
hundred
citizens
in
a
city
of
about
30,000 population
can
see
an
utterly
unconventional
aerial
machine
just
overhead
and,
almost
by
the
time
the
dogs
have
stopped barking,
press
and
officialdom
are
uninterested
4
Dr.
Seff told
me
just
last
week
that
he
had
en-
countered
a
Redlands
University
coed
who
had
seen
the
object
(he
hadn't
inter-
viewed her
previously),
and
she
seemed
still
terrified
by
the
incident.
I
believe
that
your
Committee
must
recognize
an
unfilled
scientific
obligation
to
get
to
the
bottom of
such
matters.
8.
Many
other
multiple-witness
cases could
be
cited,
some from
my
own
inter-
viewing
experience,
far
more from
other sources within
this
country
and
abroad.
An
October
28,
1954
sighting
in
Rome
was
estimated
to
have
been viewed
by
thou-
sands
of
people,
one
of
whom
was
U.S.
Ambassador
Clare
Booth
Luce
(Ref.
10)
with her
embassy
staff.
Mrs.
Luce
said
it
had
the
shape
of
a
silver
dollar
and
crossed
the
skies
in
about
30
seconds.
A
now
-famous group
of
sightings
of
June
26/27, 1959,
near
Boianai,
New
Guinea,
was
observed
by
several
dozen
witnesses,
•
the
principal
one
of
whom
I
interviewed in
Melbourne,
in 1967,
Rev.
Wm.
B.
Gill.
Bloecher
(Ref.
8)
describes
a
number
of
mid
-1947
incidents
where
the
witness
-
totals
ranged
from
dozens
up
to well
over
a
hundred
persons..:
Hall (Ref.
10)
cites
more
recent
instances.
Many
other sources could
be
cited
to
show
that
the
intimation
that
UFOs
are never
seen except
by
lone
individuals driving
along
some
remote back road
(a
frequent
setting,
to
be
sure!) does not
accord
with
the
actual
facts.
Multiple-witness
UFO
cases
are
impressively
numerous.
WHY
AREN'T
UFO'S
EVER
SEEN IN
CITIES?
WHY
JUST IN
OUT-OF-THE-WAY PLACES?
One
cannot study the
UFO
problem long without
being struck
by
the
pre-
ponderance of
reports
that
come from somewhat
remote
areas,
non
-urban
areas.Similarly,
one
cannot
escape the
conclusion
that
more
UFOs
are
reported
atnight
than
in
day.
For
the
latter,
luminosity
and
its
obvious
effect
on
probability
of chance
visual detection
may
go
far
towards
explaining
the
diurnal
variation
of
UFO
sightings
(though
I
suspect that
most
students of the problem
would
conclude that
there
is
a
real
excess
of
nighttime occurrences for
quite
unknown
reasons).
Why,
some
ask with
respect
to the geographical
distribution,
don't
the
UFOs,
if
real
and
if
extraterrestrial,
spend
most
of
their
time
looking
over
our
cities?
That's
what
we'd do,
if
we
got
to
Mars
and found huge urban
complexes,
some
skeptics
insist.
It
is
surprising to find scientists
who
do
not
see
through the transparency of
that homocentric
fallacy.
If
it
were
true that
we
were under
surveillance
from
some
advanced
civilization
of
extraterrestrial origin,
the
pattern of the observa-
tions,
the motivation of the
surveillance,
and
the degree of
interest
in
one
versus
another aspect
of our
planet could
be almost incomprehensible to us. Aboriginal
natives
under
anthropological observation
must
find
almost incomprehensible
the motives behind the strange things that the
field
-teams do, the
odd
things in
which they are
interested.
But
the
cultural
and
the
intellectual
gulf that wouldseparate
us from any
intelligent
beings
commanding a
technology so advancedthat they could cross interplanetary or
interstellar
distances to inspect
us would
be a
gulf vastly greater
than that which
separates
a Harvard
field
-anthropologist
from a New
Guinea
native.
And,
for
this reason,
I
think one must
concede that,
within the argumentation carried
out under
tentative consideration of
an
extra-