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

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maybe they'll all turn out to do that, but so far, we've got an awful lot of them that we
can't even come close to explaining."
• "I'd like to, at the risk of repeating, just sum up some of these points. One is, Lieutenant
Ruppelt mentioned around 800 cases that we have in our files. We know that that's only a
portion of the sightings that have been made. Those are the ones that have managed to be
reported to some military base and then through channels get to us. You can read local
newspapers almost anywhere in the country, and if you read them over a period of time,
you'll find stories on these things that we have not heard of. We've even heard of them in
military organizations that have not been reported because I think it's almost a case of the
airline pilots that wonder if there isn't something peculiar. For example, I was talking to
some people from SAC the other day, and they were telling me about a radar bomb
scoring run of a B-29 out at St. Louis. And they were following the B-29 in to the initial
point. The operator noticed this plane flying or an object at 48,000 feet. The B-29 was at
25,000 feet. He immediately thought, 'Well, that's possible.' I mean, double harmonics or
something, and anyway, he explained it away in his own mind. Well, then the blip started
descending on a collision course, and a quick check revealed that it was descending at a
rate of something like 1,000 miles an hour. He got a little more concerned, still thought,
'Well, possibly this is either in the radar or in some atmospheric condition.' Well then
when the thing broke off and made a turn and then another turn and took the course and
disappeared, they just don't know what it is. We find on these radar sightings that you're
just left pretty much outside. I mean, you can't really dig in. You haven't got anything
because there's so many of them that can be explained as there's a possibility that it is
something either in the atmosphere or in the set. We had one good one not too long ago,
and one of our electronics people pulled out a textbook and, gee, there was a case written
up in the textbook exactly what had been reported to us. A hovering object that made a
rapid rate of ascent and then took off on a course. Well, such a thing has occurred
apparently because of weather phenomena, been reported and pretty thoroughly written
up. So we find that whole area of sightings, I mean we're just left without any answers.
One point that was not brought out is our relationship with Battelle."
• "Oh, yes, I forgot to mention... Battelle Memorial Institute. They're one of the contractors
who do work for us and... (inaudible) ...They're always silent. They became interested in
this when we pointed out to them one day that here's an area in which we've had a lot of
problems, and we're looking for help. We don't know the answers. So, one of the things
that they hope to do for us is make available to us people who are specialists in various
areas. So if we get a case that calls for an astronomer, we can quickly get an astronomer
to work on it. Another thing is possibly a clipping service that will bring in a mass of
reports we don't have, and if any of them are worth following up, we can. But our
problem is just getting facts. We don't have enough facts to do anything other than
explain that 80% of these, roughly, are known objects, or possibly. As a matter of fact,