Transcript of a Presentation by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, 1952

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do this, and that is try to put in a long focal length camera, try to match this, a long focal
length camera with the radar spinner, so that whenever this radar operator gets a return,
all he has to do is poke a button and this camera will take a picture of the area of the sky
that the radar spinner is pointing at. And in that, if we get that far, and if we get a bad or
funny return, we'll say, an unusual return on a scope, and if we get an image, no matter
how big the image is, on the photographic plate or on the film at the same time, why then
we can say that this radar operator was actually picking up something. I mean, that would
be a great help to us now because we don't know for sure if they're even picking anything
up. But that's the next step and it's still in the planning or even it's in the talking stage
right now. That's about the main thing we're going to try to do as far as future plans are
concerned. We want to get, try to get some concrete data to say that these things exist. Up
till the present time, we've got no real proof that anything even exists. The only thing
we've got are reports from very reliable people that do have a lot of details in them, but
the details aren't the kind that we want. I mean, they don't give us enough data as to the
possible performance or anything else that we might need on these objects. The official
Air Force viewpoint is that we've got enough good reports from reliable people to be
interested in this. We can't back up any of these books by Scully or Keyhoe and say that
we know that they're from Venus or that we know they're from Russia or that we even
know they exist. I mean, there's a possibility that everything that's being reported is some,
is a balloon or is a meteor or ducks or anything you can think of that somebody just saw
them from an odd angle or under odd lighting conditions and they look like something
else. But it's at the present time, we have enough faith in these people that have been
turning in the reports to say that we don't exactly believe them. I mean, we're going to
have to get more proof before we can say that everything that's being seen is some known
object just viewed under different circumstances.
I could go on for a long time telling you about the good reports we've had. I'd say about 20% of
the 800 or 900 reports that we now have just cannot be explained. I mean, you can't say that
looks like a meteor. You can't say that that could be a balloon if there's a balloon in the area
because it just doesn't tie up. And most of these people that have made these reports are well-
established airline pilots, I mean, old pilots who've had a lot of flying time, the people that
released these General Mills balloons have seen something, the people at White Sands have seen
very odd things, this Dr. LaPaz himself has seen a couple things floating over the mountains
down in New Mexico that he didn't, he couldn't explain. And we've got about 20% of our reports
are like that, that we just, we can't go up to them and say, 'Now you can't, this can't be, you're
nuts.' I mean, that would be our only answer on those. 'You're just crazy.' But you can't go up to
anybody and tell them that. I mean, they're, they've seen something and we don't know what it is.
Now, some of the big questions that enter our mind on this is one, the no sound business. If it
actually exists and there's no, there's some type of propulsion but there's no sound, what could it
possibly be? Another big question is, and it's getting into the lines of psychology, why or how
could a person look up at night or in the dusk, we'll say, or even in the daytime and see some of