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
54 terrestrial hypothesis for UFOs, incomprehensibility must be expected as almost inevitable. Hence there is more whimsy than good reasoning in queries such as, "Why don't they land on the White House lawn and shake hands with the President?" Nevertheless, the evidence affords a fairly definite answer to the skeptics ques- tion, "Why aren't they ever seen over or in cities?" They are. 1. Case 16. New York City, November 22,1966 A report in a 1967 issue of the NICAP UFO Investigator (Ref. 33) reads as follows: "A UFO over the United Nations in New York City was reportedly seen onNovember 22, 1966. Witnesses included at least eight employees of the American Newspaper Publishers Association, who watched from their offices on the 17th floor of 750 Third Avenue at 4:20 p.m. on a bright, sunny day. The UFO was a rectangular, cushion-shaped object . . .(which) came southward over the East River, then hovered over the UN Building .. . It fluttered an bobbed like a ship on agitated water." Witnesses mentioned were D. R. McVay, assistant general manager of ANPA and Mr. W. H. Leick, manager of the ANPA's Publications Department. I tele- phoned the ANPA offices and spoke at some length with Mr. Leick about the sighting. He confirmed that eight or nine persons went out on the 17th floor ter- race, watching the object hover over the UN Building (as nearly as they could estimate) for a number of minutes as it rocked and reflected the sun's rays with a golden glint before rising and moving off eastward at high speed. I asked Leick if they reported it to any official channels, and he said that A. A. LaSalle called a New York office of the Air Force and was assured that an officer would be in the next day to interview them. But no one ever came. Leick added that they also phoned a New York newspaper "which shall go unnamed," but "they weren't interested." It got to NICAP almost by accident, and NICAP sent up their standard witness -questionnaires which- Leick said they all filled out. Discussion.—When an incident such as this is cited to the skeptic who asks, "Why no UFOs near cities?", I find that his almost invariable retort is some- thing like: "If that had really happened, why wouldn't hundreds to thousands of persons have reported it?" There are, I believe, two factors that explain the latter situation. First, consider the tiny fraction of persons on any city street whose vision is directed upwards at any given moment. In absence of loud noises aloft, most urbanites don't spend any large amount of time scanning the skies. In addition to infrequency of sky -scanning, another urban obstacle to UFO detection is typically restricted vision of the full dome of the sky; buildings or trees cut down the field of view in a way not so typical of the view afforded the farmer, the forest ranger, or a person driving in open country. Finally, in UFO studies, it is always necessary to draw sharp distinction between a "sighting" and a "report". The first becomes the second only if a witness takes the step of notifying a newspaper, a law -enforcement office, a university, or some official agency. It is abundantly clear, from the experience of UFO investigations in many parts of the world, that psychological factors centering around unwilling- ness to be ridiculed deter most witnesses from filing any official report on a very unusual event. Again and again' one learns of a UFO sighting quite in- directly, from someone who knows someone who once mentioned that he'd seen something rather unusual. On following such leads, one frequently comes upon extremely significant sightings that were withheld from official reporting channels because of the "ridicule lid", as I like to term it, that imposes a filter screening out a large number of good sightings at their source. Returning to the 11 / 2 2/66 New York City report, I must say that, between the information NICAP secured from the witnesses and my own direct con-versations with Leick, I accept this as a quite real sighting, made by reliable observers under viewing circumstances that would seem to rule out obvious conventional explanations. When the object left its hovering location, it rosestraight upward rapidly, before heading east, Leick said. Although he and his colleagues may well have erred in their slant-range estimate which put it over the ITN Building, their description of its shape and its maneuvers would appear to rule out helicopters, aircraft, balloons, etc. 2. Case 17. Hollywood, Calif., February 5-6, 1960 A still more striking instance in which entirely unconventional objects wereobserved by many city-dwellers, where low -altitude objects hovered and ex-hibited baffling phenomena, is a central Hollywood case that was rather care- fully checked by LANS, the Los Angeles NICAP Subcommittee (Ref. 34). The
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.