Project Blue Book: Exposed

In the Beginning… A Brief History of Project Blue Book

Like all things in the UFO field, it is not easy to put together a simple history of Project Blue Book because it was never a single project and it was almost always wrapped in secrecy. There were forerunners to it that were also classified, and good evidence that it coexisted with other projects that were also tasked to investigate UFOs. There is even a suggestion that an official UFO investigation survived the declared end of Project Blue Book in December 1969.

The first document to relate to the beginnings of Project Blue Book was written and signed on September 23, 1947. Lieutenant General Nathan F. Twining, then the commander of the Air Materiel Command, suggested to the commanding general of the Army Air Forces, General Carl Spaatz, through Brigadier General George Schgulen, that "The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious." He recommended that "Headquarters, Army Air Forces issue a directive assigning a priority, security classification and Code Name for a detailed study of the matter."

On December 30, 1947 (the Air Force having come into official existence on December 17, or just two weeks earlier) Major General L.C. Craigie approved the recommendation. Project Sign was created as a 2A classified project, the highest being 1A. Although the general public was aware that a project had been created, they knew it as "Project Saucer," rather than Project Sign.

Although the project did not exist in the summer of 1947, the files did include cases from that period. The first recorded sighting is from early June and from Hamburg, New York. The case is missing, but according to the Index, was a misidentification of an aircraft. The next case was from Seattle, Washington, and is also missing. It is listed as "Insufficient Data." In fact, the first several cases are listed as missing.

According to the documentation, Project Sign began its work on January 22, 1948 and the first major investigation was into the crash of a Kentucky National Guard aircraft flown by Thomas Mantell. He had been chasing an unknown object near the Godman Army Air Field when the accident took place.

By the summer of 1948, dozens of seemingly inexplicable cases had been reported to the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright Field in Dayton, Ohio. It wasn't until a DC-3 was "buzzed" by a flying saucer in July 1948 that the situation began to crystallize. On the twenty-fourth, a rocket-shaped object with two rows of square windows and flames shooting from the rear flashed past the aircraft piloted by Captain Clarence S. Chiles and John B. Whitted. At least one of the passengers also saw the object. An hour earlier, a ground maintenance crewman at Robins Air Force Base in Georgia claimed to have seen the same object.

Some of the officers at Sign, convinced they now had proof that the flying saucers were extraterrestrial, now put together what they called an estimate of the situation. They concluded that flying saucers came from other planets, wrote a report containing the best evidence they had, and shipped it up to General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, then Air Force chief of staff. According to Captain Edward Ruppelt, who would eventually head up Project Blue Book, Vandenberg wasn't impressed with the evidence. He rejected the report, and ordered it declassified and destroyed.

Dr. Michael Swords, who had an opportunity to review drafts of Ruppelt's original work, made some interesting observations about the estimate of the situation. In an article published in the International UFO Reporter, Swords outlined these deletions. To illustrate what had been left out of the book as published, he used italics to show the deleted material. That text as published was printed in a normal typeface.

"In intelligence, if you have something to say about some vital problem you write a report that is known as an 'Estimate of the Situation.' A few days after the DC-3 was buzzed, the people at ATIC decided that the time had arrived to make an Estimate of the Situation. The situation was 'UFOs; the estimate was that they were interplanetary!

"It was a rather thick document with a black cover and it was printed on legal-sized paper. Stamped across the front were the words TOP SECRET.

"It contained the Air Force's analysis of many of the incidents I have told you about plus many similar ones. All of them had come from scientists, pilots, and other equally credible observers, and each one was an unknown.

"It concluded that 'UFOs were interplanetary. As documented proof, many unexplained sightings were quoted. The original UFO sighting by Kenneth Arnold; the series of sightings from the secret Air Force Test Center, MUROC AFB; the F-51 pilot's observation of a formation of spheres near Lake Mead; The report of an F-80 pilot who saw two round objects diving toward the ground near the Grand Canyon; and a report by the pilot of an Idaho National Guard T-6 trainer, who saw a violently maneuvering black object.

"As further documentation, the report quoted an interview with an Air Force major from Rapid City AFB (now Ellsworth AFB) who saw twelve 'UFOs flying a tight diamond formation. When he first saw them they were high but soon they went into a fantastically high-speed dive, leveled out, made a perfect formation turn, and climbed at a 30 to 40 degree angle, accelerating all the time. The 'UFOs were oval-shaped and a brilliant yellowish-white.

"Also included was one of the reports from the AEC's Los Alamos Laboratory. The incident occurred at 9:40 A.M. on September 23, 1948. A group of people were waiting for an airplane at the landing strip in Los Alamos when one of them noticed something glint in the sun. It was a flat, circular object, high in the northern sky. The appearance and relative size was the same as a dime held edgewise and slightly tipped, about 50 feet away."

"The document pointed out that the reports hadn't actually started with the Arnold Incident. Belated reports from a weather observer in Richmond, Virginia, who observed a 'silver disc' thought his theodolite telescope; an F-47 pilot and three pilots in his formation who saw a 'silvery flying wing,' and the English 'ghost airplanes' that had been picked up on radar early in 1947 proved the point. Although reports on them were not received until after the Arnold sighting, these incidents had all taken place earlier.

"When the estimate was completed, typed, and approved, it started up through channels to higher-command echelons. It drew considerable comment but no one stopped it on its way up."

General Vandenberg, at the Pentagon, eventually received the Estimate, but was apparently less than impressed. According to Ruppelt, at that point, "it was batted back down. The general wouldn't buy interplanetary vehicles. The report lacked proof."

A group of military officers and civilian technical intelligence engineers was then called to the Pentagon to defend the Estimate. According to the work done by Michael Swords, these were likely Lawrence H. Truettner, A. B. Deyarmond, and Alfred Loedding. Swords noted, parenthetically, that "Truettner and Deyarmond were the authors of the Project Sign report that contained many of these same cases and sympathies; Loedding was a frequent Pentagon liaison in 1947 and considered himself the 'civilian project leader' of Sign."

The military participants were probably the official project officer, Captain Robert Sneider, as well as Colonels Howard McCoy or William Clingerman, who would have had to sign off on the Estimate.

Swords noted that the defense was unsuccessful, but not long after the visit to the Pentagon, everyone named was reassigned. Swords writes, "So great was the carnage that only the lowest grades in the project, civilian George Towles and Lieutenant H.W. Smith, were left to write the 1949 Project Grudge document about the same cases."

Swords pointed out that Donald Keyhoe had mentioned the existence of the Estimate a number of times and was told that it was a myth. According to Swords, "The famous Armstrong Circle Theatre fiasco of 1958, where Keyhoe was cut off in mid-sentence, was partly due to the fact that he was about to mention this document."

After Vandenberg "batted" the report back down, after the staff was reduced, and after the fire went out of the investigation, Project Sign limped along. It was clear to everyone inside the military, particularly those who worked around ATIC, that Vandenberg was not a proponent of the extraterrestrial hypothesis. Those who supported the idea risked the wrath of the number one man in the Air Force. They had just had a practical demonstration of that. If an officer was not smart enough to pick up the clues from what had just happened, then that officer's career could be severely limited.

Project Blue Book files show this to be the case. When Sign evolved into Project Grudge and then into Blue Book, a final report about Sign was written. Those inside Sign originally believed that UFOs were extraterrestrial until Vandenberg said he didn't find their reasoning adequate. Then, those inside Sign, those who were left, decided that other answers must be the correct ones. UFOs, flying saucers, were not extraterrestrial.

A report entitled, "The Findings of Project Sign," was eventually written. It outlined the motivation behind Project Sign, who the players were, and then the results of their research. In the "Summary," it was noted that the data in the report were "derived from reports of 243 domestic and thirty (30) foreign incidents. Data from these incidents is being summarized, reproduced and distributed to agencies and individuals cooperating in the analysis and evaluation… The data obtained in reports received are studied in relation to many factors such as guided missile research activity, weather and other atmospheric sounding balloon launchings, commercial and military aircraft flights, flights of migratory birds, and other considerations, to determine possible explanations for sightings."

The authors of the report wanted to make the situation clear. They wrote, "Based on the possibility that the objects are really unidentified and unconventional types of aircraft, a technical analysis is made of some of the reports to determine the aerodynamic, propulsion, and control features that would be required for the objects to perform as described in the reports. The objects sighted have been grouped into four classifications according to configuration:"

"1. Flying discs, i.e., very low aspect ratio aircraft.

"2. Torpedo or cigar shaped bodies with no wings or fins visible in flight.

"3. Spherical or balloon-shaped objects.

"4. Balls of light."

The authors reported that "Approximately twenty percent of the incidents have been identified as conventional aerial objects to the satisfaction of personnel assigned to Project 'Sign' in this Command. It is expected that a study of the incidents in relation to weather and other atmospheric sounding balloons will provide solutions for an equivalent number… Elimination of incidents with reasonably satisfactory explanations will clarify the problem presented by a project of this nature.

"The possibility that some of the incidents may represent technical developments far in advance of knowledge available to engineers and scientists of this country has been considered. No facts are available to personnel at this Command that will permit an objective assessment of this possibility. All information so far presented on the possible existence of space ships from another planet or of aircraft propelled by an advanced type of atomic power plant have been largely conjecture."

They provided a number of recommendations, writing, "Future activity on this project should be carried on at the minimum level necessary to record, summarize, and evaluate the data received on future reports and to complete the specialized investigations now in progress." They then add a phrase that too many UFO researchers have overlooked in the past. They write, "When and if a sufficient number of incidents are solved to indicate that these sightings do not represent a threat to the security of the nation, the assignment of special project status to the activity could be terminated."

This is a theme that would be repeated in one official UFO investigation after another. They would mention this aspect again and again. Each of the investigations, from Sign forward, had national security as its main concern. If national security wasn't threatened, then the question of reality became unimportant. And, as time passed, it became more likely to all those military investigators that no threat to the nation was posed.

The authors also wrote, "Reporting agencies should be impressed with the necessity for getting more factual evidence on sightings such as photographs, physical evidence, radar sightings, and data on size and shape."

The conclusions of the report are interesting. "No definite and conclusive evidence is yet available that would prove or disprove the existence of these unidentified objects as real aircraft of unknown and unconventional configuration. It is unlikely that positive proof of their existence will be obtained without examination of the remains of crashed objects. Proof of their nonexistence is equally impossible to obtain unless a reasonable and convincing explanation is determined for each incident."

They then write, "Many sightings by qualified and apparently reliable witnesses have been reported. However, each incident has unsatisfactory features, such as shortness of time under observation, distance from observer, vagueness of description or photographs, inconsistencies between individual observers, and lack of descriptive data, that prevents conclusions being drawn."

This one paragraph would also become important in understanding the UFO investigations of the future. Time and again those in the government would suggest that there were no good photographs, that eyewitness testimony was unreliable, and that the sightings were of nothing more spectacular than a fuzzy object in the distance. Those arguing against the reality of the phenomenon would often make these same claims.

The reason for the recommendation for a continuation of the project had nothing to do with research into phenomena. The authors write, "Evaluation of reports of unidentified objects is a necessary activity of military intelligence agencies. Such sightings are inevitable, and under wartime conditions rapid and convincing solutions of such occurrences are necessary to maintain morale of military and civilian personnel. In this respect, it is considered that the establishment of procedures and training of personnel is in itself worth the effort expended on this project."

About a year earlier, the personnel assigned to Sign had concluded that flying saucers were extraterrestrial. Now, using the same cases and the same evidence, those who survived at ATIC were claiming that there was nothing to the UFO phenomenon. More importantly, they were saying there was no threat to national security, but that the project should be continued for training proposes.

On December 16, 1948, just a year after its beginning, Project Sign became Project Grudge. With the new name came a new attitude. All reports were investigated on the premise that they were simply misidentifications of natural phenomena or aircraft, or they were outright hoaxes. Flying saucers didn't exist so there could be no proof found they existed.

Just a year later, on December 27, 1949, the Air Force announced that Project Grudge, the official investigation into the flying saucer sightings, was being closed. The final report would be available to reporters as soon as it was completed.

That final report contained the cases studies of 237 of the best reports. A number of experts, including Dr. J. Allen Hynek, were able to explain some of the sightings as astronomical phenomena. Captain A.C. Trakowski, of the Air 'Force's Cambridge facility, reviewed the various balloon records to determine if sightings could be explained by balloons. It was an in-depth study.

And, when all was said and done, the Grudge report had explained all but twenty-three percent of the sightings. But the Psychology Branch of the Air Force's Aeromedical Laboratory attempted to eliminate that 25 percent. The officials there, wrote, "There are sufficient psychological explanations for the reports of unidentified flying objects to provide for plausible explanations for reports not otherwise explainable… "

But the point that seems to have gotten lost is that nearly a quarter of the sightings reported to the Air Force did not have mundane explanations. So, when they failed to find a solid explanation, they invented the psychological category. As those at the Aeromedical Laboratory suggested, some people just had spots in front of their eyes.

But even though the Air Force had announced that it had closed Project Grudge, such was not the case. Grudge continued to function at a low level with a single investigator, Lieutenant Jerry Cummings. When a series of spectacular sightings were made at the Army's Signal Corps Center at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, Cummings, and Lieutenant Colonel N. R. Rosengarten, who was the chief of ATIC's Aircraft and Missiles Branch, were sent to investigate. They then returned to personally brief the chief of Air Force intelligence, Major General C.P. Cabell.

The meeting didn't go well as Cabell, other military officers, and representatives of Republic Aircraft complained about the quality of the work being done by Grudge. There was a threat to national security, though no one was sure exactly what that threat might be. Cummings and Rosengarten were ordered back to Wright-Patterson with orders to reorganize the UFO project.

But Cummings didn't have much of a chance to do anything. He was discharged from the Air Force. Rosengarten then asked Ed Ruppelt, an intelligence officer at ATIC, to reorganize Grudge.

Ruppelt began to file the reports and cross-reference them. He found that many were missing. He put together a staff who had no firm beliefs for or against the idea that flying saucers were real. And, he subscribed to a clipping service so that he would be able to learn of sightings that were not reported to the military. He hoped to gain some insights into the UFO problem by gathering data and statistics about them.

In 1950 and 1951 combined, there were 379 sightings reported to the UFO project. Of those, all but 49 were explained. Other sightings, from 1947 to 1949 were periodically reviewed, and new solutions were attached to the old cases.

In March 1952, Grudge had its status upgraded. Now it was the Aerial Phenomena Group and the code name had been changed once again. It was now known as Project Blue Book.

But just as Ruppelt was getting things organized, the situation changed. Inside of getting UFO reports two or three a week, they began to come in two or three a day. In his book he wrote that the clippings that had been coming in a thick envelope began to arrive in boxes.

July would be the big month. On two consecutive weekends, UFOs were spotted over Washington, D.C. Fighters were scrambled, people on the ground saw the lights in the sky, and airline pilots alerted about the lights saw them as well. The sightings were front page news throughout the country, forcing the military to respond to reporters and the public.

At a hastily called press conference, Major General John A. Samford told reporters that the sightings might be the result of temperature inversions. Samford hadn't meant that as a complete answer, but the news media seized it and ran with.

More importantly, Ruppelt, who did investigate, to some extent, the sightings, pointed out that Air Force personnel were pressured by their superiors to change their stories. Lights that had been inexplicable became stars seen through the haze hanging over the city. Skeptics suggested the radar returns were the result of the inversion layers. It made no difference that the men on the scopes, and one of the military officers, were experts and could tell weather phenomena from solid targets. The sightings were explained, in the public arena, as temperature inversion. Curiously, the Blue Book files listed them as "unidentified."

Press and public interest increased dramatically when newspapers bannered the Washington National sightings at the end of July. During August the sightings throughout the country continued, as they did in September. By the end of 1952, the Air Force had added more than fifteen hundred sightings to the files. More importantly, over three hundred of them were unidentified. The situation had become intolerable.

Part of the solution was the creation of the Robertson Panel. In September 1952, as the UFO reports were still flooding Project Blue Book, H. Marshal Chadwell, then Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, sent a memo to General Walter Bedell Smith, then Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the CIA. He wrote, "Recently an inquiry was conducted by the Office of Scientific Intelligence to determine whether there are national security implications in the problem of 'unidentified flying objects,' i.e. flying saucers; whether adequate study and research is currently being directed to this problem in its relation to such national security implications; and further investigation and research should be instituted, by whom, and under what aegis."

Chadwell continued, writing, "… [P]ublic concern with the phenomena indicates that a fair proportion of our population is mentally conditioned to the acceptance of the incredible. In this fact lies the potential for the touching-off of mass hysteria… In order to minimize risk of panic, a national policy should be established as to what should be told to the public regarding the phenomena."

Those words should have a chilling effect on anyone who reads them. What Chadwell is saying, in his best big brother voice, is that American citizens are gullible, believe incredible things, and can be manipulated into mass hysteria. The government, with its more learned and stable members, should decide what can be or should not be told to the public about flying saucers.

It is also clear, from the tone of the document what Chadwell already believes. Tales of flying saucers are incredible. These things simply cannot exist and therefore do not exist.

In December 1952, just weeks before the group would actually meet, Chadwell decided to form a scientific advisory board. It was decided that Dr. H. P. Robertson, who had accompanied Chadwell to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to review the UFO evidence, would chair the investigation.

Under the auspices of the CIA, the panel convened on January 14, 1953. They reviewed the best of the UFO cases including both the films that had been taken by private citizens. They examined the radar cases and the photographic cases. In fact, there are indications that it was the movies that had brought the various scientists to the table.

On Friday afternoon, with the evidence presented including briefings by Ruppelt and Hynek, Robertson was given, or took, the task of writing the final report. By the next morning, in an age that had no copy machines, Fax machines, word processors or computers, Robinson finished his draft of the report. Not only that, Lloyd Berkner had already read it. As had Chadwell, who had taken it to the Air Force Directorate of Intelligence to have it approved. Before the committee assembled on Saturday morning, the report was, in essence, finished and approved.

One other thing must be understood to keep the Robertson Panel in perspective. Their first concern was to determine if UFOs posed a threat to national security. That was a question they could answer. They decided, based on the number of UFO reports made through official intelligence channels through the years, that UFOs did, after a fashion, pose a threat.

Ed Ruppelt mentioned it in his analysis of the Robertson Panel. Too many reports at the wrong time could mask a Soviet attack on the United States. Although hindsight shows us this threat was of little importance, especially when the sorry state of Soviet missile research in 1952 is considered, it was a major concern to those men in the intelligence field in the early 1950s. A sudden flood of UFO reports, not unlike what had happened during the summer of 1952, could create havoc in the message traffic so that critical messages of an imminent attack would be hidden or lost.

With that as a concern, the Robertson Panel, who had seen nothing to suggest that UFOs were anything other than misidentifications, hoaxes, and weather and astronomical phenomena, (and who obviously wanted to see nothing else) needed to address this concern. That was the motivation behind some of the Panel's recommendations. These recommendations then, were born of a need to clear the intelligence reporting channels, and not of a need to answer the questions about the reality of the UFO phenomena.

The Panel report stated, "…although evidence of any direct threat from these sightings was wholly lacking, related dangers might well exist resulting from: a. Misidentification of actual enemy artifacts by defense personnel. b. Overloading of emergency reporting channels with 'false' information ('noise to signal ratio' analogy — Berkner). c. Subjectivity of public to mass hysteria and greater vulnerability to possible enemy psychological warfare."

They went on, writing, "Although not the concern of the CIA, the first two of these problems may seriously affect the Air Defense intelligence system, and should be studied by experts, possibly under ADC. If U.F.O.'s become discredited in a reaction to the 'flying saucer' scare, or if reporting channels are saturated with false and poorly documented reports, our capability of detecting hostile activity will be reduced. Dr. Page noted that more competent screening or filtering of reported sightings at or near the source is required, and that this can best be accomplished by an educational program."

Of all the suggestions in the Panel report, this is the area that has caused the most trouble with interpretation. The Panel was suggesting that if people were more familiar with what was in the sky around them, if they were familiar with natural phenomena that were rare but spectacular, then many sighting reports could be eliminated. How many UFO sightings are explained by Venus, meteors, or bright stars that seemed to hover for hours? In today's environment, with video cameras everywhere, how many times has Venus been taped and offered by witnesses as proof they saw something?

Under the subheading of "Educational Program," the Panel recommended, "The Panel's concept of a broad educational program integrating efforts of all concerned agencies was that it should have two major aims: training and 'debunking.'"

The Panel explained, "The training aim would result in proper recognition of unusually illuminated objects (e.g. balloons, aircraft reflections) as well as natural phenomena (meteors, fireballs, mirages, noctilucent clouds). Both visual and radar recognition are concerned. There would be many levels in such education… This training should result in a marked reduction in reports caused by misidentified cases and resultant confusion."

The problem with the next paragraph came from the use of the word "debunking." Many read something nefarious into it, while the use of it, and the tone of the paragraph suggest something that was, at the time, fairly innocuous, at least according to Condon sixteen years later.

"The 'debunking' aim would result in reduction in public interest in 'flying saucers' which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such as television, motion pictures, and popular articles. Basis of such education would be actual case histories which had been puzzling at first but later explained. As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the 'secret' is known. Such a program should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public and consequently their susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda. The Panel noted that the general absence of Russian propaganda based on a subject with so many obvious possibilities for exploitation might indicate a possible Russian official policy."

They then discussed the planning of the educational program. Some have seen that as a "disinformation" program designed to explain UFOs as mundane. The real reason behind it, however, seems to be to end sighting reports made by those who are unfamiliar with the sky. The educational program was suggested as a teaching tool.

The UFO information presented, according to those who were at some or all of the panel's sessions, was managed. They had a limited time and were unable to examine all aspects of the UFO field in the time they had. It can be suggested that a careful management of the data supplied would provide a biased picture and that the conclusions drawn from that specific data would be accurate, but those conclusions would be skewed. It could be argued that the panel was designed specifically so that time would not allow those embarrassing questions to be asked. And, it can be suggested that the panel was loaded with scientists who had already made up their minds about the reality of UFOs.

A careful study of the data supplied to the Robertson Panel does suggest that UFOs are little more than anecdotal gossip. The exceptions supplied to them are the movies and the data from radar. However, without another piece of data, without some kind of physical evidence that would lead to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, no other conclusions could be drawn. The films were interesting, but there were alternative explanations, which while not as satisfactory in the long run, were certainly no less valid. And radar cases are open to the interpretation of the radar operators. Their training, talent and expertise are all important factors.

It was at this same time, the beginning of 1953, that the investigative emphasis that had dominated Blue Book for the eighteen months that had preceded the Robertson Panel began to erode. Ruppelt suggests that it was his demands that more investigators be found, but it seems that Blue Book was becoming too visible and too public. Although the project would continue, the investigative responsibility was moved from Blue Book to the 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron.

Air Force Regulation 200-2 was in the planning stages with a version approved in August 1953. A year later, August 1954, the regulation went into effect effectively eliminating Blue Book from the investigative mix. Although the regulation required that ATIC be notified about the UFO investigations, there was nothing in it that required Blue Book be informed. What we have is the classic situation where one agency has the responsibility for the UFO investigations and another has the authority. Blue Book had been effectively eliminated, though it still existed.

Ruppelt left the project and it was handed off to a variety of other officers. At one low point in 1953, it was being run by an airman first class, a rather low enlisted grade. Ruppelt inherited it again for a couple of months, and then he was replaced. In March 1954 Captain Charles Hardin became the director.

In April 1956, Captain George T. Gregory, a man who didn't believe, led Blue Book into an almost rabid anti-UFO direction. The change in tone is evidenced in the investigations being conducted. During this time, sightings were to be identified, no matter how. The belief was that UFOs were not extraterrestrial spacecraft, and if they weren't, then another, mundane explanation should be available. The list of early sightings explained under this new concept is extraordinary. Possible was left off the case files so that it seemed that the explanation was definite.

In December 1958, one of the officers assigned to the UFO project claimed that he found "certain deficiencies" that he felt "must be corrected." Specially he referred Air Force Regulation (AFR) 200-2, "dated 5 February 1958, (revised on that date) which essentially stipulates the following… to explain or identify all UFO sightings."

After December 1958, there was an attempt to transfer Blue Book to some other Air Force agency, specially, the Secretary of the Air Force, Office of Information (SAFOI).

On April 1, 1960, in a letter to Major General Dougher at the Pentagon, A. Francis Archer, a scientific advisor to Blue Book commented on a memo written by Colonel Evans, a ranking officer at ATIC. Archer said, "[I] have tried to get Bluebook out of ATIC for ten years… and do not agree that the loss of prestige to be a disadvantage."

In 1962, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Friend, who at one time headed Blue Book, wrote to his headquarters that the project should be handed over to a civilian agency that would word its report in such a way as to allow the Air Force to drop the study. At the same time, Edward Trapnell, an assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force, when talking to Dr. Robert Calkins of the Brookings Institution, said pretty much the same thing. Find a civilian committee to study the problem, then have them conclude it the way the Air Force wanted it. One of the stipulations was that this organization, no matter what it was, had to say some positive things about the Air Force handling of the UFO investigations.

Other government officials suggested closing Blue Book but realized that the public would have to be "educated to accept the closing." By 1966, the Air Force managed to get Blue Book press releases by SAFOI. Letters to the public no longer carried the prestigious ATIC or Foreign Technology Division letterhead but only the stamp of the Office of Information.

The major stumbling block was a new wave of sightings that were getting national attention. First, New Mexico police officer Lonnie Zamora reported an egg-shaped object on the ground near Socorro. He reported seeing two beings near it, and when it took off, it left landing gear markings and burned vegetation.

The public interest in UFOs began to rise. Network television paid attention and several prestigious magazines began to treat the subject with a little respect. Air Force explanation seemed tired, and even the most superficial investigations revealed flaws in their solutions. When Hynek, after hearing the sightings in Michigan in 1966 might be swamp gas, all credibility was lost.

Something had to be done because of the growing publicity. The Air Force was in a hole and no one was listening to its tired explanations. Someone decided that it was time for an independent study of the phenomena. The outgrowth of this was the Condon Committee, organized at the University of Colorado and funded by more than half a million dollars of taxpayer money funneled through the Air Force.

Scientific director of the project, the man who received the Air Force grant, was Dr. Edward U. Condon, who was a professor of Physics and Astrophysics, and a Fellow of the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics at the University of Colorado. As a career scientist, Condon had the sort of prestige the Air Force wanted.

As noted by the documentation that appeared after the declassification of the Project Blue Book files, and as noted here, the formation of the Condon Committee was part of an already existing plan. Find a university to study the problem (flying saucers) and then conclude it the way the Air Force wanted it concluded.

Jacques Vallee, writing about the Condon Committee in Dimensions, said "As early as 1967, members of the Condon Committee were privately approaching their scientific colleagues on other campuses, asking them how they would react if the committee's final report to the Air Force were to recommend closing down Project Blue Book." This tends to confirm the real mission of Condon was not to study the phenomenon but to study ways to end Air Force involvement in it.

Dr. Michael Swords has spent the last several years studying the history of the Condon Committee and confirms the view that the Air Force used Condon. But Condon was a willing participant in the deception. According to a letter discovered by Swords and written by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hippler to Condon, the plan was laid out in no uncertain terms. Hippler told Condon that no one knew of any extraterrestrial visitation and therefore, there "has been no visitation."

Hippler also pointed out that Condon "must consider" the cost of the investigations of UFOs and to "determine if the taxpayer should support this" for the next ten years. Hippler warned that it would be another decade before another independent study could be mounted that might end the Air Force UFO project.

Condon understood what Hippler was trying to tell him. Three days later in Corning, New York; Condon, in a lecture to scientists including those members of the Corning Section of the American Chemical Society and the Corning Glass Works Chapter of Sigma XI, told them, "It is my inclination right now to recommend that the government get out of this business. My attitude right now is that there is nothing in it. But I am not supposed to reach a conclusion for another year."

Robert Low responded to Hippler's letter a day or so after Condon's Corning talk, telling him that they, the committee, are very happy that now know what they are supposed to do. Low wrote, "…you indicate what you believe the Air Force wants of us, and I am very glad to have your opinion." Low pointed out that Hippler had answered the questions about the study "quite directly."

In 1969, the Condon Committee released their findings. As had all of those who had passed before them, the Condon Committee found that UFOs posed no threat to the security of the United States. Edward U. Condon in Section I, Recommendations and Conclusions, wrote, "The history of the past 21 years has repeatedly led Air Force officers to the conclusion that none of the things seen, or thought to have been seen, which pass by the name UFO reports, constituted any hazard or threat to national security."

After suggesting that such a finding was "out of our province" to study, and if they did find any such evidence, they would pass it on to the Air Force, Condon wrote, "We know of no reason to question the finding of the Air Force that the whole class of UFO reports so far considered does not pose a defense problem."

Included in the Recommendations, was the idea that "It is our impression that the defense function could be performed within the framework established for intelligence and surveillance operations without the continuance of a special unit such as Project Blue Book, but this is a question for defense specialists rather than research scientists."

That seems to have taken care of most of the requirements. Condon had confirmed that national security wasn't an issue, had said some positive things about Air Force handling of the UFO phenomenon, and had recommended the end of Project Blue Book. He had done his job.

Finally, Condon wrote, "It has been contended that the subject has been shrouded in official secrecy. We conclude otherwise. We have no evidence of secrecy concerning UFO reports. What has been miscalled secrecy has been no more than an intelligent policy of delay in releasing data so that the public does not become confused by premature publication of incomplete studies or reports."

It is impossible to understand how Condon could write those words after being handed a stack of Blue Book files stamped secret that had been held by the Air Force for more than a decade. It is impossible to understand this, when, there was documentation that proves secrecy on the part of the Air Force. It was in 1969, before the official end of the Condon Committee, that Brigadier General C. H. Bolender wrote, "Moreover, reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security are made in accordance with JANAP 146 or Air Force Manual 55–11, and are not part of the Blue Book system."

In other words, documentation existed to support the claim there was secrecy. While a case can be made that the regulations and the secrecy are warranted by the circumstances, it can also be argued that the secrecy did exist, contrary to what Condon wrote.

What this does, is demonstrate that the Condon Committee was not an unbiased scientific study of UFOs, but a carefully designed project that had a single objective. End public Air Force involvement in the UFO phenomenon. After all, according the Hippler, should the taxpayers fund another ten years of UFO research?

The Condon report suggested there was no evidence of extraterrestrial visitation and that all UFO reports could be explained if sufficient data had been gathered in the beginning. This is exactly what Hippler wrote in his January 1967 letter to Condon. Yet, even when they selected the sightings they would investigate, they failed to explain almost thirty percent of them. In one case (over Labrador, 30 June 1954), they wrote, "This unusual sighting should therefore be assigned to the category of some almost certainly natural phenomenon, which is so rare that it apparently has never been reported before or since."

But even with the holes in the study, even with the contradictory evidence, and even with the proof that something unusual was going on, Condon did what he was paid to do. He ended Project Blue Book. On December 17, 1969, the Air Force announced that it was terminating its study of flying saucers. The twenty-two year old study had come to a close.