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.
“The Advance”52 pages
56 only something that "spiraled downwards" beneath the explosion source. No witness seemed certain of what it was that came down; some spoke of "glowing embers"; no one gave indication of following it to ground. Glossing over other details bearing on this "explosion" at an estimated 5-600 ft. above Sunset and Sycamore, witnesses next became aware that the just - extinguished red light had evidently reappeared in a new location, about a block to the west. Police officers Ray Lopez and Daniel Jaffee, of LAPD, located at the corner of Sunset and La Brea, heard the explosion and looked up, seeing the light in its new location "directly overhead", as did many others at that intersection who then watched the red light hovering in its new location for about 8 minutes. ( Space precludes my giving all pertinent information on time - estimates as set out in the 21 -page LANS summary. For example, a good time -fix on the explosion came from the fact that E. W. Cass, a contractor living almost a mile west, was just winding his alarm clock, looking at it, when flare -like illumination "lit up the whole bedroom", just at the indicated time of 11 :30. He went out, watched the hovering red light in its new location, and added further details I shall omit here. Others took their time clues from the fact that 11 :30 commercials had just come on TV when they heard the peculiar explosion and hastened outside to check, etc.) The red light, now over Sunset and La Brea, was roughly triangulated at about 1000 ft up, a figure in accord with several witness comments that, when it re- appeared some 4-5 seconds after the "explosion", it lay not only somewhat west of its first location, but noticeably higher. After hovering there for a time in- ferred to be eight minutes, it began slowly drifting eastward, much as on the previous night when much less spectacular events had occurred. Larry Moquin,one witness who had taken rather careful alignment fixes using rooflines as an aid, remarked that, at this stage, La Brea and Sunset was filled with watchers: "Everybody was standing outside their cars looking up—cars were backed up in the streets—and everyone was asking each other, "What is it?" After moving slowly but steadily (observers mentioned absence of bobbing, weaving, or irregularity in its motion) for about a block east, to its first loca- tion it turned sharply towards the north-northeast, accelerated, and climbed steeply, not stopping again until at a very high altitude well to the north. From crude triangulation, LANS investigators inferred a new hovering altitude of over 25,000 ft, but it is clear from the data involved that this estimate is extremely rough. Discussion.—Although I have done no personal witness -interviewing to date In the 2/60 Hollywood case, I can vouch for the diligence and reliability with which the LANS group pursues its case -studies. The large number of interviews secured and the degree of consistency found therein seem to argue that some extremely unusual devices maneuvered over Hollywood on the two nights inquestion. Unless one simply rejects most of the salient features of the reports. it is quite clear that no meteorological or astronomical explanation is at all reasonable. Nor does any conventional aircraft match the reports. The question that arises almost immediately is that of a practical joke, a hoax. However, the resources required to fabricate some device yielding the complex behavior (stop motionless, move against wind, explosively emit secondary de- vices, and finally, in the 2/6 event, climb to rather high altitude) would scarcely be available to college pranksters. The phenomena go so far beyond the gas - balloon level of hoaxing that one must have some much more elaborate hoax hypothesis to account for the reported events. Balloons must drift with the winds, and the LANS group secured the local upper-wind data for both nights, and there is no match between the reported motions and the winds in the surface-1000 -ft layer. And, in any event, the alternation between hovering and moving, plus the distinct direction -shifts without change of apparent altitude, cannot be squared with balloon -drift. This would mean that some highly controlled device was involved, capable (in the 2/6 incident) of hovering in an almost precisely stationary position relative to the ground (Moquin sighted carefully, using struc- tural objects to secure a fix when the red light lay right over La Brea and Sun- set, and perceived no motion for many minutes). Yet the Weather Bureau was reporting 5 mph winds from the southwest at 1000 ft (triangulated altitude when hovering there). Only if one hypothesized that this was an expensively elaborate experiment in psychological warfare could one account for financial resources needed to build a device capable of simulating some of these phenomena. Such a hypothesis seems quite unreasonable in the 100-megaton age where ever-presentrealities of weaponry pose more psychological strains than Disney -like pyrotechnics.
Hearing transcript, from the govinfo collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 256 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.