UFOs: The Untold Story (NSA-held copy)

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

The situation got out of hand during the summer of 1952. On the morning of July 28, the Washington Post revealed that U.F.O.'s had been tracked on radar at Washington National Airport, the second such incident in a week. Reporters stormed Air Force headquarters in the Pentagon, where switchboards were jammed for days with U.F.O. inquiries. Military installations across the country handled such a volume of reports that "regular intelligence work had been affected," reported The New York Times.

These events prompted action at C.I.A. headquarters, apparently at a request "from the Hill." From the start, the agency's involvement was to be kept secret. An August 1 C.I.A. memo recommended that "no indication of C.I.A. interest or concern reach the press or public, in view of their probable alarmist tendencies to accept such interest as 'confirmatory' of the soundness of 'unpublished facts' in the hands of the U.S. Government."

The C.I.A.'s Office of Scientific Intelligence (O.S.I.) found that the Air Force's investigation of the U.F.O. phenomenon was not sufficiently rigorous to determine the exact nature of the objects in the sky. Neither did the Air Force deal adequately with the potential danger of U.F.O.-induced mass hysteria, or the fact that our air vulnerability was being seriously affected by the U.F.O. problem. O.S.I. chief H. Marshall Chadwell thought that our nation's defenses were running the increasing risk of false alert and, worse yet, "of falsely identifying the real as phantom." He suggested that a national policy be established "as to what should be told the public" and, furthermore, that immediate steps be taken to improve our current visual and electronic identification techniques so that "instant positive identification of enemy planes or missiles can be made." Ever vigilant, the C.I.A. was keeping an eye on the possibility that U.F.O.'s could be of Soviet origin.

By the winter of 1852, Chadwell had drafted a National Security Council proposal calling on a program to solve the problem of instant positive identification of U.F.O.'s. In a memo that accompanied the proposal, Chadwell urged that the reports be given "immediate attention." He thought that "sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles." He said that O.S.I. was proceeding with the establishment of a consulting group "of sufficient competence and stature to . . . convince the responsible authorities in the community that immediate research and development on this subject must be undertaken."

But C.I.A. Director Gen. Walter B. Smith's interest apparently lay elsewhere. In a letter to the Director of the Psychological Strategy Board, he expressed a desire to discuss "the possible offensive and defensive utilization of these phenomena for psychological warfare purposes." Only later did Director Smith authorize recruiting an advisory committee of outside consultants.

The scientific panel met for four days beginning Jan. 14, 1953. Chaired by Dr. H.P. Robertson, an expert in physics and weapons systems, the panel essentially bestowed the scientific seal of approval on previously established official policy regarding U.F.O.'s. The distinguished panelists felt that all the sightings could be identified once all the data were available for a proper evaluation in other words,

the phenomenon according to the panel's rea were not "beyond the domain of present knowledge of physical sciences." Neither did the panelists find U.F.O.'s to be a direct threat to national security, though they believed that the volume of U.F.O. reports could clog military intelligence channels, precipitate panic, and lead defense personnel to ignore real indications of hostile action. The panel worried about Soviet manipulation of the phenomenon; that the reports could make the public vulnerable to "possible enemy psychological warfare." The real danger, they concluded, was the reports themselves.

Fearing that the myth of U.F.O.'s might lead to inappropriate actions by the American public, the panelists decided that a "broad educational program integrating efforts of all concerned agencies" must be undertaken. They sought to strip U.F.O.'s of their "aura of mystery" through this program of "training and 'debunking.'" The program would result in the "proper recognition of unusually illuminated objects" and in a "reduction in public interest in 'flying saucers.'" The panelists recommended that their mass-media program have as its advisers psychologists familiar with mass psychology and advertising experts, while Walt Disney Inc. animated cartoons and such personalities as Arthur Godfrey would help in the educational drive. To insure complete control over the situation, the panel members suggested that flying-saucer groups be "watched because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking if widespread sightings should occur. The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind."

The panel's recommendations called for nothing less than the domestic manipulation of public attitudes. Whether these proposals were acted upon, the C.I.A. will not say. But the report was circulated among the top brass at the Air Technical Intelligence Center, the C.I.A.'s Board of National Estimates (of which Hoover was a member), the C.I.A.'s bureau chiefs, the Secretary of Defense, the chairman of the National Security Resources Board, and the director of the Federal Civil Defense Administration, who eventually sent a representative to meet with C.I.A. officials in order to "implement the appropriate aspects of the Panel's Report as applicable to Civil Defense."

The Government's efforts in the 50's and 60's to squelch