by Dan Wright
So, under the tutelage of Major Quintanilla, the Robertson Report's snarky critique of the “aura of mystery” surrounding UFO reports was itself sanitized, evolving into an “aura of danger” in need of elimination.
The Chicago Daily News concentrated on the fallacies of Blue Book's so-called investigations: James McDonald, the U of Arizona atmospheric physicist, said he believed some UFOs have to come from beyond Earth, “operated or controlled in some way by thinking beings.” He criticized swamp gas and ball lightning as explanations. He dismissed Air Force investigative methods as “a scientific scandal,” stating the professed investigators were untrained in the sciences. He declined to speculate on UFO origins. The writer said a University of Colorado in-depth study would continue 15 months.20
The Washington Evening Star took its turn announcing the Colorado study, saying the physicist Edward Condon would be given a “free hand.” In response, NICAP said the scientific inquiry was “superficial.”
In 1948, as director of the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), with ties to the American-Soviet Science Society and a wife from Czechoslovakia, Condon was considered a possible security risk by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. By 1951 he was being pressured to leave the NBS. In 1954 he lost his Navy security clearance—blaming Vice President Richard Nixon. By 1966 he was editing a science journal and was on an advisory board for another. Asked why he would tackle the UFO question, he said, “It's an intriguing mystery that hasn't really been looked into thoroughly.”21
The Los Angeles Times weighed in on October 9, featuring Blue Book skeptic Dr. James McDonald, who claimed that the CIA's Philip Strong “signed the order to debunk UFO sightings.” Rather than a cover-up, he regarded the Air Force efforts as a massive foul-up.22
McDonald referenced the April 17, 1966, Ravenna, Ohio, hour-long UFO chase by police. Afterward, McDonald said, the Air Force interviewer had begun the debriefing with, “Now, what about that mirage you saw?”23 McDonald claimed hundreds of reports never reached the public because of this debunking policy. The silence, he insisted, dated back to a rash of sightings in 1952. As to the reality of these events, McDonald offered, “[S]ome of the objects may carry persons from outer space on reconnaissance missions over the earth.” He came to an extraterrestrial conclusion reluctantly, he added, as the only hypothesis that made enough sense.24
On October 12, 1966, Agency staffer L. K. White (title redacted) penned himself a memo on a meeting held that day in which briefs on potential Vietnam battlefield scenarios were discussed for the CIA Deputy Director's attention. Someone noted tangentially that a UFO series in the Washington Evening Star would begin in a matter of days.25
On October 28, the Agency's deputy director of research and development met with representatives of the Air Force scientific research office, at the request of the latter. That office was a channel for Agency grants and contracts. The deputy wrote to himself the next day, “Apparently AFOSR is somewhat nervous about the university problem.” One of the AFOSR attendees had asked whether the Robinson [sic] report from 1963 [sic] could be formally declassified and then released, that it “would appreciably assist them in their current difficulties over UFO's.”26
The Air Force and its miniscule and underutilized Project Blue Book staff indeed found themselves in a bind. They could not satisfactorily explain the phenomena, nor could their best debunking outreach put an end to the periodic flaps of sightings. After nearly two decades of halting, half-hearted efforts, they had finally punted. The Colorado study would utilize four physicists and three psychologists. They would ostensibly analyze all the phenomena associated with UFO sightings as well as review Air Force methods of receiving, investigating, and evaluating sighting reports.
Yet, this development might not have been entirely a matter of good riddance from the USAF perspective. By the phrase “university problem” in the deputy director's memo for the record, he might well have been signaling friction, either within the Condon Committee itself or between elements of the Air Force and the committee.
At 7:30 p.m., November 4, 1966, a man driving on I-77 between Marietta, Ohio, and Parkersburg, West Virginia, encountered a “dark long object” that stopped on the road before him. A “man” stepped out, approached his vehicle and communicated via “thought waves or mental telepathy.” The being began, “Have no fear. We come from a country that is not nearly as powerful as yours. We mean no harm.” He claimed the conversation had proceeded for perhaps 5 or 10 minutes.27 Note: Readers might question the likelihood that a “dark long object” could rest on an interstate highway for several minutes without attracting attention from passersby.
A December 7 letter from (redacted) to an Auburn, Washington, resident acknowledged receipt of his letter and suggested that he contact the Air Force. No specifics were given.28
On the morning of December 23, 1966, on his popular radio program, interviewer Joe Pyne had as his guest Frank Stranges, author of Stranger at the Pentagon. Stranges claimed he had met a Venusian. Pyne in turn challenged him to take a polygraph test. Stranges instead related a letter he had sent to the CIA, thereafter forwarded to the Air Force. In reply, Stranges said the USAF “wrote me a letter saying by faith, f-a-i-t-h, flying saucers are real.”29
Much was written and spoken in the fifties, and into the sixties, about the contactees—a handful of individuals who claimed not just rudimentary contact but intelligent conversations with nonhuman beings. Most claimed either repeated encounters or to be of alien origin themselves.
While you were away from your desk . . .
The ever-expanding US military involvement in Vietnam warranted, and received, the government's primary attention. War dominated the print and televised media as well. This left Michigan's Congressman Gerald Ford as something of a lone voice on the House floor, calling for a hearing to make sense of whatever it was over those Michigan towns of Hillsdale and Dexter that March.
March 20 and 21, 1966
About 8:30 p.m., outside the village of Dexter in southeast Michigan (not far from Ann Arbor), an object dropped meteor-like out of the sky and landed in a wetland half a mile past a farm. The farmer and his adult son walked to within 500 yards of what they described as a dark, cone-shaped object with a “quilted” surface, hovering just over the swampy terrain. Momentarily the anomaly flew past them and was gone. They immediately reported what they had observed. Soon a crowd of fifty townspeople, including the local police, gathered and watched similar objects perform aerial maneuvers. Six separate patrol cars chased the elusive crafts that night—to no avail.30
The next night, an hour away at Hillsdale College, a small liberal-arts college in south-central Michigan, the county's civil defense director, a college staffer, and 87 coeds at a dormitory watched for four hours as a glowing football-shaped object meandered erratically over a swamp a few hundred yards away. When law enforcement arrived, the object's exterior dimmed, only to brighten again when the police left. At a later point the oddity approached the dorm, stopped, then retreated to the marsh. Using binoculars, the civil defense director concluded it was some kind of unknown craft.31
Major newspapers and televised news picked up on the back-to-back, multiple-witness accounts, assailing the Air Force in particular for remaining on the sideline. Project Blue Book's Major Hector Quintanilla sent the project's scientific consultant, Northwestern University astronomer J. Allen Hynek, to the dual scenes. After two days of interviewing witnesses, which he later termed “chaotic,” with the press biting at his backside for a statement, Hynek issued his dreadful determination that “swamp gas” was probably responsible. He and the Air Force immediately assumed the role of laughingstocks.
Note: The colloquially termed “swamp gas” is the product of an actual chemical reaction under the right conditions. Buildup of methane amid wet rotting vegetation may indeed ignite into candle-like flames. But two provisos: First, such conditions are far more likely to occur in the heat of summer, not late winter in Mich
igan. Second, the effect is indeed candle-like flames, not the formidable displays related by observers in both communities.
March 28, 1966
The following week, NICAP held a press conference at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C., to support Congressman Gerald Ford's call that day for UFO-related hearings. Relatedly, it also called for the establishment of a government tracking network.32
Humiliated by the press and public over his patently absurd resolution, Hynek would ultimately undergo a metamorphosis in his thinking. Having begun his association with the Air Force most of two decades before as a hardcore debunker of all things UFO related, ultimately his cynicism faded. As he would one day tell this editor privately, he reached a point of critical mass in his thinking. “How long could I go on believing all these people were lying or gullible?” In 1973 Hynek would found the Center for UFO Studies, which now bears his name.
At the urging of Congressman Ford, the House Minority Leader, the Armed Services Committee held the first open Congressional hearing on the matter of UFOs on April 5, 1966. Air Force Secretary Harold Brown, Project Blue Book head Major Hector Quintanilla, and Blue Book's consultant Hynek testified. Mr. Brown asserted that UFOs posed no threat to national security and were not from outer space. Dr. Hynek bristled at being called a “puppet of the Air Force” in the press. He stated his opinion that “the body of data accumulated since 1948 ... deserves close scrutiny by a civilian panel of physical and social scientists ...” Afterward, the committee announced that a new outside scientific study would be undertaken. Formally titled the University of Colorado UFO Project, that group came to be known as the Condon Committee.33
April 17, 1966
In Portage County, Ohio, about 5:00 a.m., two sheriff deputies on patrol near Ravenna were outside their cruiser checking on an apparently abandoned vehicle when an unconventional object rose up behind trees nearby and hovered directly above, bathing them in light, before moving into the predawn darkness. Racing back to their car, the men spoke by radio with their sergeant, who ordered them to give chase and keep it in sight while he assembled a photographic team. The aerial object, ovular with a flattened bottom and a vertical projection (fin) at the rear, meandered about while remaining 300–500 feet above the ground. The officers used various roads in pursuit, speeding to over 100 mph at times to keep up.34
An officer in East Palestine, Ohio, (near the Pennsylvania state line) was monitoring radio traffic, spotted the object and joined the chase. Making their way across the border, at the town of Conway, Pennsylvania, they saw a parked cruiser. The aerial object had halted and was hovering in place nearby. The four officers stood by their cruisers and watched the sight. Someone on the radio remarked that Air Force jets had been scrambled to intercept the intruder. Moments later they saw the planes arriving in the distance. “When they started talking about fighter planes, it was just as if that thing heard every word that was said; it went PSSSSHHEW, straight up; and I mean when it went up, friend, it didn't play no games; it went straight up.”35
In time, Blue Book's Major Quintanilla declared that the police officers had misidentified variously a satellite and Venus. In a personal meeting with the men, said to be acrimonious, Quintanilla refused to reconsider his conclusion.36
Note: At 5:00 a.m. EDT for Portage County, Ohio, the moon and Venus were both below the horizon. By 6:00 a.m., a sliver of the waning moon was visible on the east-southeast horizon; Venus was at 11 degrees altitude, also in the east-southeast. The sun rose at 6:43 directly east. By 7:00, the moon was at 13 degrees altitude and Venus higher at 21 degrees but fading in the morning light.37
April 22, 1966
Shortly after 9:00 p.m., numerous Beverly, Massachusetts, residents saw three gray-white saucers circling low over the high school and other buildings. Each displayed red, green, and blue flashing, rotating lights. Three women were among those on the campus grounds observing. When one of them waved her arms, one of the ships glided silently over and halted directly above them. Two Beverly PD officers arrived, then retreated when a disc descended over the school gym. The objects finally moved away, only to be seen minutes later by many people over Gordon College in nearby Wenham.38
August 24 and 25, 1966
The ICBMs at Minot AFB, North Dakota, drew oversight from the 91st Strategic Missile Wing, the 862nd Combat Support Group, and the 786th Radar Squadron. On August 24, and again on the 25th, multiple personnel stationed at three far-flung missile sites were witness to aerial intruders, confirmed by radar, for a total period of 3½ hours. As reported officially by the base director of operations, radio communication with a missile combat crew 60 feet underground was interrupted by static when the UFO hovered low overhead. From there the intruder rose to 100,000 feet whereupon the radio returned to normal. At another point an object descended and began to “swoop and dive,” then it appeared to land some 10–15 miles away. A strike team headed toward the landing area but was still a number of miles short when heavy static disrupted its communications.39
Chapter 20
1967: The Tempest Rages
A letter to the editor of the Syracuse Post-Standard on January 7, 1967, claimed that UFOs were being observed in ever-increasing numbers, for longer periods of time. Since the March 1966 sightings in southeast Michigan, “virtually every national magazine has printed something on UFO's.” Meanwhile, physicist James McDonald cited a 1953 CIA report persuading the Air Force to debunk UFO reports on national security grounds. Now the Air Force had teamed with the University of Colorado to engage in a lengthy and, purportedly, scientific study.1
In February 1967 came a translated article from the popular Russian magazine Cmena (Change). For centuries major science discoveries had been met by popular resistance initially. Dr. Felix Ziegel of the Moscow Aviation Institute argued such was the situation with UFOs. Did the problem actually exist? Were there really indisputable facts pointing to the existence and reality of UFOs? It was easier to just say no.2
Dr. Ziegel outlined some recent history: In August 1947 and July 1948, US airline pilots veered to avoid collision with a cigar-shaped object; in the latter, the object's exhaust violently shook the plane. Various attempts in the same time period to pursue UFOs were met by great accelerations and sharp maneuvers. In January 1948, a Kentucky ANG pilot crashed pursuing an unknown. In August of 1949, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh and family observed anomalous rectangles cross the sky.
More recently, in the summer of 1965, air traffic controllers at Canberra, Australia, witnessed an unknown that hung overhead for 40 minutes. At a space tracking station nearby, an unknown seemingly interfered with Mariner 4 (satellite) signals. On August 1, 1965, four unknowns at great height were tracked on radar over Kansas and Colorado. UFOs were caught on radar in the US, USSR, Australia, India, and Japan. Ziegel summarized, “[T]he riddle of UFOs has become a scientific problem and highly-qualified specialists ... have been called upon to solve it.”3
Possible explanations according to Ziegel's thinking:
All UFO reports were nonsense, either fabricated or from careless observations.
UFOs existed but were not what they seemed to be, for example, atmospheric optics at work. Too simplistic, he concluded.
UFOs were secret aircrafts of a world power. Initially the US military spread rumors they were Soviet. This notion lost sway over the years.
They were little-understood natural phenomena, such as plasmas. This argument was worthy of attention but hardly a full explanation.
They were from other planets, surveying Earth. “[This] is an extreme point of view and at first glance completely improbable,” Ziegel noted. But terrestrial organisms would not endure the enormous accelerations.
Separately, he concluded, none of the existing hypotheses could be the final answer. “[T]he only correct course is clear—to subject the mysterious UFO phenomenon to thorough and careful scientific study.”4
NPIC Enters the Fray
The US Air Force contracted with the
University of Colorado for a study to be completed in early 1968 but with the potential for an extension if warranted. USAF Brigadier General Edward Giller and physicist J. Thomas Ratchford monitored the project from Washington, D.C. General Giller established an informal liaison with the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) and its Director, Arthur C. Lundahl, for technical services including measurements and enlargements. Early on, Dr. Lundahl stipulated the limited degree of the center's involvement: “These photos are rare so very little work and no commitment of NPIC are involved.”5
Dr. Ratchford requested five scientists, including Condon, to attend a meeting at NPIC to inspect its special photographic gear. Lundahl then sought approval from the Agency's deputy director for the visit.
I have told USAF representatives that I can have no part in writing whatever they might conclude on this UFO phenomena but that I might be able to help them technically.... At the same time I might be able to preserve a CIA window on this program ...6
The deputy director called the director's attention to an Air Force contract with the University of Colorado concerning UFOs. Dr. Condon had called NPIC's Lundahl for technical support. “The amount of work would be minimal,” he promised. The DD/I and DCI agreed to offer the services of NPIC.7
A memo from NPIC responded to a request from (redacted) for analysis of four photographs—three of an alleged UFO and one of a helicopter claimed to be in the area—supplied by the Foreign Technology Division (FTD, formerly the Air Technical Intelligence Center). The four photos were reproduced from second-generation negatives of poor quality. The originals were from a Polaroid camera and not available for analysis. A USAF major used an identical camera for five photos of the Lake St. Clair, Michigan, surroundings.8