65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_010

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'
-
f
-'r . ........
of the 11,000 sightings · since
1947, did have some ex­
planations. ·Th e mystedous
f 1am in g object in the East
was "probably a meteor."
As for :Michigan's much­
•
you details," he complained.
'No Threat'
"If they did, many of their
The
main
conclusions
explanations would fall flat."
r e a ch e d by the Air Force
And K e y h o e could also
were:
claim a powerful ally in
~ "No unidentified fiying
public i z e d and plentiful
unidentified f 1 y i n g objects,
they turned out to be
monkeyshines i n s t e a d of
moonships:
..C'nidentified
c~llege boys" playing pranks
with flares to frighten the
g i r 1 s in the dormitories,
came the aug4st report from
a distinguished astronomer
called in by the Air Force to
investigate the HiUsdale af­
fair.
Every r.eport of a "flyina
saucer
" had ostensibly been
b
ch e ck e d out by the Air
Force's special squad known
as ''Project Blue Book," al­
though the staff was woefully
small. Of the 10,147 sightings
s 1 n c e 1947, the Air Force
insisted that only 646 remain
unexplained -
and most of
these because of insufficient
information. The others have
been attributed to . planes,
b a 11 o o n s,
astronomical
causes, missiles, swamp gas,
meteo r s, fireworks and, in
some cases, to hallucinations
ru1d psychological reasons.
Ball Ligbining?
Philip Klass, avionics edi­
tor of Aviation Week & Space
Technolo g y
magazine,
recently proposed soine other
exp I an at ions. Klass, an
electronics engineer, said a
form of "ball lightning," gen­
erated by high tension power
lines, could explain the phe­
nomena.
Many of the sightings, said
-mass, occw·red along or very
near high-tension lines where
luminous balls of ionized air
could be g e n e r a t e d under
certain conditions.
obJects reported, investigat­
ed and evaluated by the Air
· Force haYe ever given any in­
dication of a threat to our
national security."
o "There has been no ev-
Tclence submitted to or discov­
ered by the Air Force that
sightings represent t e c h n o­
•1ogical developments or prin­
ciple s beyond the range of
present day scientific knowl­
edge."
c "There has been no evi­
dence th2t sightings catego­
rized as unidentified are ex­
traterrestrial vehicles."
Major D on al d Keyhoe,
however, w as unconvinced.
Major Key h oe, USMC (re­
tired), director of the Nation­
al Investigations Committee
on A er i a I Phenomena (NI•
CAP ), a private space watch­
ing organization, accused the
Air F o·r c e of conducting a
long-term whitewash on the
UFO question.
It wa_s Keyhoe's theory
that the Air Force was with­
holding information for fea~
of c a u s in g public panic.
UFOs, insisted the Major,
who had never seen one. were
of exb-aterrestrial origin an.:
the Air Force feared that the
public could not accept this
knowledge. "They won't give
Michigan's Gerald Ford, the·
Hou se Republican leader,
who suggcs:ed it would be " a
very wholesome thin g" for
Congress to look into uniden­
tified flying objects. Such an
investigation. Ford suggest­
ed. would make the Ameri­
can people '·feel better."
- Study in Depth
Whether or not that was· so,
the Air Force last week took
definite steps to make itself
feel better. Fed up with in­
yestigating reports of glow­
ing, f l y i n g. zooming, wink­
ing, awe s ome, blinking,
streaking, hoveling things,
the Air Force last week de­
cided to bail itself out of all
responsibility for future con­
clusions concerning UFOs.
The Air Force announced
that it had commissioned the
University of c o 1 0 r a d O to
conduct an "in-depth" study
of flying saucers for the next
18 m O n th s. The director of
the study (expected to cost
$300,000) would be Dr. Ed­
ward U. Condon, former di­
rector of the National Bureau
of St an d a r d s, and now a
physics professor at Colora­
do.
. To satisfy the skeptics, and
rnsm·e the study's objectivi­
ty' C o 1 o r a d o would select
several other universities to
~ake ~art. in the independent
m~est~gation, with about 100
scientists participating.
And in c.a s e that wasn't
enough, the National Acade­
my of Sciences also agreed
to appoint a panel to review
the Colorado report.