Presentation by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, 1952

00:00speaker 1This medium has been declassified in compliance with applicable executive order, statutes, and regulations.

00:11speaker 2Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men

00:27speaker 2to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men

00:43speaker 3addressing the microphone with voice straight at the microphone and my mouth separated from the microphone by a distance of about 15 in. I expect that the speaker will put out approximately this volume. And I will now, as before, turn around slowly and address my words to the blackboard. This I am now doing, talking straight into the blackboard as if I were drawing some diagrams. And then going to turn around slowly again now to face the audience. I'm separated from the microphone by a somewhat greater distance as if I were slightly leaning backward.

01:23speaker 2Right around the zero, that's the desirable level. If, for example, we turn the gain down

01:35speaker 2Now, now. So, you see, it's just about wide open now to pick everything in the room up. See how it jumps in the end. Now, let's see if we play it back.

01:57speaker 2I can't hear you. Is there anything already on the tape now? Yeah, there's a there are a few things on the tape. Yeah. Why don't you say something? Why don't you start talking? I'm embarrassed. I don't have anything to say. Like, this thing will be rewound and then What? What? I couldn't hear you.

02:17speaker 1here about 1947. You're possibly familiar with them to a certain extent following newspaper uh reports. The first ones were sighted by Kenneth Arnold in June of 1947 out in Idaho. Now, uh I'll refer to them as these things because we have no idea what we're dealing with. Uh

02:38speaker 1the newspapers and and radio played them up uh to a great degree at that time and uh consequently introduced a little bit of probably a little bit of mass hysteria or something like that into the problem. Uh they flared up for about uh oh, spasmodically for about 2 years and then the things uh died down to a certain extent.

02:59speaker 1Um the Air Force took over this project soon after the first sighting because the public demanded an explanation uh of these objects. In 19 in August of 1949, uh the Air Force came out with a a report, supposedly a final report on this, uh where they

03:18speaker 1reached a few conclusions. Now, they had some uh uh specialists in certain fields working on this problem, and you might be interested in knowing who they were. There was a Dr. A. J. Hynek, astronomer at Ohio State, Dr. G. Valley of the Scientific Advisory Board, a Dr. Fitts of the Aero Medical Lab, I believe he was a psychologist,

03:39speaker 1a Rand Corporation, Air Weather Service, uh Cambridge Field Station, and the US Department of Commerce Weather Bureau. All those people took the reports, I believe they had about 300 reports at that time, they took the reports and read them over, came up with their conclusions. Uh all their conclusions varied to a certain extent.

03:58speaker 1Um they all agreed that they didn't know exactly what they were, however, they were uh obviously no direct threat to the United States, so they uh didn't pay too much more attention to them. Uh the Air Force came up with uh several conclusions in in that report. One of them was that it was a mild case of uh war uh mass hysteria due to

04:18speaker 1uh, one might say, war nerves, the war just over. Uh some of them were due to psychopathological uh people uh nuts, something like that, trying to create uh excitement or get publicity, or pure due to pure hoaxes. And the other one was that they were due to misinterpretation of conventional objects.

04:39speaker 1Well, since that time, uh several years has passed, we've been able to go back and review these conclusions a little bit. We've been able to drop out all except the misinterpretation of conventional objects. Uh going going back, we have uh approximately 800 cases now on record, and only about 2% of those are actual hoaxes

04:59speaker 1or uh psychopathological people who um just don't know what they see. Uh the the uh misinterpretation of known objects is still, of course, a large factor. I mean, that that could possibly account for all of them. However, it's a little bit doubtful. Uh we've gone through these reports and come up with the fact that about 20%

05:22speaker 1are very good reports uh offered by very reliable people, and there's just absolutely no um no conclusions can be drawn. Uh the uh mass hysteria factor has gone out because the newspapers haven't played this up for the last approximately 3 years. There's occasional flurries, but nothing to

05:43speaker 1get excited about at all, and still reports continue to come in. Uh we dropped this project in uh in 1949, as I said, as a special project, and have just been treating this information as regular uh intelligence material since that time.

05:59speaker 1Uh we've decided, or about last October, we decided there possibly was enough material now to reopen this case. So, we uh the center appointed a permanent project engineer, which I'm the project engineer, and uh we reviewed all this stuff. We took all the cases that we had, reworked them, filed them all in

06:19speaker 1in a uh neat file so we could tell what we had. We went through and cross-indexed all the material so we could get an idea of the of the different factors that were involved in these reports. Uh we came up with uh some results. I won't say they're outstanding results. Uh we don't know what the results mean.

06:39speaker 1But, uh unfortunately, I didn't realize we're going to have such a large audience here, so we didn't bring the slides along. I don't know whether can any of you in the back of the room see this print? Uh I'll pass it around and you can get an idea. This is a plot of the sightings in the United States. Now, this does not include the uh we have sightings outside the United States, but we're not too worried about those at the present time.

07:03speaker 1We're more interested in the United States. Uh I'll explain this a little bit to you since you can't see it. Uh we have certain areas of the United States where there are concentrations. Uh in Dayton and Columbus, Ohio, there are concentrations. Now, this is possibly due to two things. One of them is the fact that the people in that area knew that all the activity in this project was taking place in that area,

07:26speaker 1and consequently, they they were doing a little bit more reporting. Another thing is of all the experimental flying that was being done around Wright Field. And we still have a lot of trouble with that. People call in and say, "I just saw a great big light go over 5,000 miles an hour." It turns over it's a turns out it's an airplane carrying a flare, something like that. So, we've disregarded that concentration.

07:47speaker 1However, uh around all the ports in the United States, San Francisco, Los Angeles, uh the coastal area around New York City, and New Orleans, there's concentrations. Around Los Alamos and the Albuquerque area, there's concentrations, around White Sands, there's concentrations, and down here at Camp Hood, Texas.

08:06speaker 1Now, this Camp Hood, Texas, uh concentration was due to an outbreak of odd lights about 2 years ago. They never did determine exactly what the lights were. Uh they they were a special uh we might say, a special type of report that uh haven't occurred again, and we haven't paid too much attention to that. But, the ones around

08:26speaker 1uh Oak Ridge and the ones around Albuquerque uh may possibly uh mean something. We don't know. The rest of the reports are pretty well scattered out around the United States. If you plot these reports up by years, they started on the West Coast, up around in the northwest, around Washington, Oregon, Idaho, in 1947.

08:48speaker 1The next year, they were they tended to be on the East Coast to a certain extent, and from then on, they were just spread out all over the United States. There was no no pattern. We've plotted the frequency of these reports again. And you'll see that it doesn't vary too much year from uh from year to year.

09:07speaker 1Uh this large peak down here, if you can see a little better, this large peak down here uh occurred right after the first sighting by this Arnold out in Idaho, and it was undoubtedly a lot of it was due to mass hysteria, people uh wanting to get their names in the paper. However, you see, it it tapered off, and it's uh reaches a peak

09:26speaker 1right in uh let's see, this is June and July. And every year, almost, it's reached a peak in there. It's also peaked to a certain extent here in uh January, and then again, there's a peak here in December. Now, there's actually no no direct pattern to that, but there's enough of a pattern that uh uh it plots to see the doubt in your mind. You sort of wonder why this thing should run a cycle like that.

09:51speaker 1In these 2 years, '47 and '48, there was a lot of newspaper publicity. However, in '49, '50, and '51, there was very little newspaper

10:00speaker 1publicity. And the reports from '49, '50, and '51 are mostly from military sources. The civilians have dropped out because possibly they didn't know where to report this stuff, or they weren't interested in it. The Air Force came out and said that there was nothing to it, so they just quit making reports. However, military has continued to make reports. I should say military and and a few airlines pilots uh are covering these two years.

10:25speaker 1We've taken the uh reported shapes. We have a lot of questions. People say, "Well, what what are people reporting?" So, we've broken it down into shapes. Uh in this segment here, there were no shapes reported. Somebody just called in or wrote a letter and said, "I saw something." So, we've had to disregard it. Uh this segment right here represents uh some type of of an astronomical body. I mean, you could say it was that. Either a bright light in the sky or a a streak of light uh that could have been a meteor. We've lumped all those together. In this section are disc or spherical shaped

10:59speaker 1objects. Uh we've lumped those together because it's uh we don't believe that people can tell if they're seeing a disc or a sphere unless they should happen to see it both on the bottom view and edgewise to determine it's a uh disc. So, we've lumped those all together. Uh some of these could be balloons. I mean, there's no doubt about that. They could be weather balloons. However, due to uh or contrary to popular opinion, these things they are not are definitely not all balloons. Uh these are

11:31speaker 1shapes of just reported as oval shapes. It's difficult to tell what they are. Miscellaneous is almost anything. Uh vapor trails probably actually were vapor trails of aircraft. There's one small segment in here, which is only 6/10 of 1% of uh all 800 reports, and that is uh reports of groups of lights going through the sky. Now, we've had quite a bit of difficulty with those because the reports are usually from pretty good sources, and they'll see uh oh, anywhere from uh 6 to 20

12:01speaker 1lights in a formation going streaking across the sky. Well, it's almost impossible that that would uh that you would find six meteors together. I I understand it's uh possible to see two of them together that would appear to be in formation, but no more than that. Uh certain percentage, 1%, are uh reported to be balloons. Now, these are balloons that we've not been able to establish the origin. In other words, we don't uh they're just balloons floating over the United States, and they're probably uh meteorological balloons that have gotten loose from some station and haven't burst when they were supposed to.

12:36speaker 1Uh oh, 2.5% resemble actual aircraft. We've had quite a bit of discussion as to whether or not these objects could possibly be some highly developed aircraft type that the Soviets have. We've almost uh been able to throw that out because a small percentage of reports that even mention any shape uh due to aircraft, that would resemble aircraft. This percentage here are uh reported to be rockets or cigar-shaped

13:05speaker 1objects. Now, once again, we've gone into that uh quite thoroughly and have found that uh, and it's, we've common knowledge, that any bright light traveling through the air will burn an image uh in your eye and will uh, you'll have some persistence there, and it will appear to be elongated when actually it's just a round source of light. Well, that's some of the uh shapes that we've had. Now, down in, getting back to this disc or spherical shaped objects, uh these things are are always silent. I mean, if if we want to assume that this object we're dealing with is a disc-shaped thing, these are always silent, and they're usually highly maneuverable. Although lately, uh the reports that have been coming in

13:45speaker 1uh have neglected to put this 90-degree turn business in. They just go over uh at at a great rate of speed. But uh the fact that they're silent is uh quite interesting because we uh we have no knowledge of any type of power plant that would uh that would be completely silent. Now, these are the types of people that send in our reports. This segment here are civilians, and most of these reports came in when the project was first initiated back in 1947 and '48. This black segment here uh are reports from military sources, and they are, we've

14:27speaker 1put them in as just uh ground officers, not usually not flying officers, or at least the reports are not uh made from the air. We have a small segment here of radar returns that we've been unable to explain. Uh this section right here are uh reports from civilian pilots uh who were airborne at the time of the sighting. This segment in here, especially, is the one we're very interested in. They're reports from airline pilots, from tower operators, uh and balloon observers. Now, these balloon observers are normally uh

15:01speaker 1people like the General Mills crews that launch these high-altitude balloons. And here we have technically trained personnel, such as scientists, engineers, and so forth. This uh segment, as I said, is the one that we're very much interested in. Now, airline pilots are uh we consider very reliable because they're very uh well, they don't like to stick their neck out and make one of these reports unless they're absolutely sure they saw something. They received some very unfavorable publicity during this last uh rash of reports, or the first, I should say, in '47 and '48, and they absolutely refuse to

15:35speaker 1give us reports unless they're completely sold that they saw something. Uh I've talked to quite a few of the pilots, and one of them made the statement if he looked out his window and saw a V-2 rocket or something like that flying wingtip to wingtip with him over Spokane, uh he wouldn't tell anybody about it. I mean, he'd never report it to the Air Force because, or to anybody, because they'd just say he was crazy and probably ground him. So, that's the big difficulty we have in getting reports from airline pilots. We do hear through the grapevine that that they see an awful lot of odd things uh and that they don't report, especially over in uh the Near East, Iran, and Middle East, I should say, Iran, Palestine, Egypt, and those runs. Now, uh

16:19speaker 1we haven't been able to pin that down as fact. That's just a rumor that we've uh picked up in in talking to other airline pilots who've heard other airline pilots say that. But we've never been able to pin it down. However, it would be uh very interesting to find out, and we're making attempts, although we've run up against a lot of trouble because, as I said, the pilots just don't want publicity, and they won't make those reports. Uh this segment in here have been reported by Air Force pilots, and they're aerial sightings. A lot of these have been balloons. Uh we've had a lot of trouble with the balloons in that uh a pilot meeting a balloon in the air isn't familiar with what that balloon's going to do. I mean, he's uh familiar with meeting another airplane,

17:01speaker 1and he's already made up his mind as to what the rate of closure should be and different things like that. He'll usually assume that the uh when he meets a balloon that it's, instead of a balloon, it's some object about 30 or 40 feet in diameter, and uh judging the rate of closure, he assumes it's going at a very terrific speed. Well, we've been able in some cases to actually show uh how that pilot was misled and that it was actually a balloon. However, we don't we don't try to say that everything uh was a balloon. In other words, if a balloon was launched in the area, we we try to definitely pin that down. And we can get the time of launch of the balloon, the rate of ascent, the winds aloft, and we can plot out the path of that balloon and plot out the pilot's path and show uh by various lines of sight uh how he actually did see the balloon.

17:51speaker 1Uh in the past, it's been a practice to say, "Well, there was a balloon launched within 100 miles, consequently, the pilot must have seen the balloon." Well, we don't want to try that because it's uh well, we just want to have more proof before we say that it's a balloon. And the Air Force has gotten into a lot of trouble in the past by uh very loosely tying up these balloons with the sightings. We have some photographs of these objects that uh, what is it? Yeah. We we have quite a few photographs, I should say. A lot of them are definitely either hoaxes or else they're uh flaws in the negative, and the people that have found this print have looked at it and said, "Ah, I took a picture of the sky, and I didn't see this flying saucer, although here's a picture of it," and they'll send it in to us. Uh it's not too difficult to uh examine them all through a microscope and find out that it that the image is due to a an imperfection in the negative. However, we have a few photographs that are very difficult to evaluate.

18:52speaker 1This is one of them right here. It was taken in Phoenix, Arizona, on the 7th of July, 1947. Um this has been hashed around quite a bit, and there's a little bit of doubt as to the uh whether or not this was purposely faked, but we've never been able to prove it. This uh picture is probably the most interesting one we've ever received, uh mainly because we went into the background of this thing a lot more. This was taken in Lubbock, Texas, last September. Now, this Lubbock case is probably the most interesting one, the whole case is the most interesting one we've ever had. Uh these five college professors from Texas Tech were sitting out in the backyard one evening, and I believe it was in August, yes, August 25th, and they happened to be discussing meteors, and so they were sitting there looking up in the sky, and all of a sudden, this bunch of lights went over. And uh

19:43speaker 1so, one of them, they looked at each other and said, "Well, what was that?" Nobody seemed to know. And so uh, about a half an hour later, why, they were still discussing the lights, and they said they wished that something like that would go over again, and it did. So uh, for, well, all together, in a period of uh

20:00speaker 1I believe it was five or six nights, they observed 12 of these things that went over. Well, they assumed that it was uh some kind of a missile that the Air Force had been developing, and being nosy, they thought they'd find out what this uh Well, they reached this conclusion after they saw the first two, that they'd find out what these missiles were. So, they uh set up their own measuring uh crude measuring systems. They uh were able to set up uh or measure the angles on the on the houses and things in in their backyard so they can tell the angle this thing went through, and they timed it with a stopwatch. They also set up a baseline uh 90° to the path, and incidentally, these things always came over the same path and at roughly the same time every night, so they knew about what was going on. Uh they set up this baseline and got each end with two-way radios and some homemade uh, oh, you might call them theodolites or measuring angle measuring devices, and tried to get an altitude. Well, they were unsuccessful on that. However, they did get their angular measurement across the sky, and it came out to be 30° per second. Now, that's the only measurement we've got on these things. Uh we didn't hear about it till about a month after it happened, and uh I went down and spent quite a bit of time with these people. At first, we thought it was just one big hoax, that they were just out to get some uh publicity. But, uh on investigating these people and talking to them, uh we found out that there was a professor of

21:26speaker 1uh believe he's head of the physics department at Texas Tech, a gentleman who is head of the petroleum engineering department at Texas Tech, uh a gentleman who'd spent last five years in Alaska studying the aurora, and uh a doctor of mathematics, and they had an astronomer who actually who didn't see these, although he was in on the investigation. Well, after they found out the Air Force was interested in it, they uh

21:49speaker 1took an entirely different view. I mean, when they found out that it wasn't one of our missiles, then they began to wonder what it was. But, the thing had happened, and it was finished, and they couldn't get any more information for us. Now, these pictures, uh well, incidentally, before that, uh they put a couple of pieces in a local newspaper to try to determine who else had seen these things, and they put their names in the paper so that people could write to them and say, "I saw it," or "I didn't see it." And, uh

22:16speaker 1they got a lot of publicity. Consequently, everybody in Lubbock, Texas was sitting up at night waiting for these things to go over. And, uh a college freshman at Texas Tech uh had his camera ready when they went over one night, and and this is the picture that he got. Now, these are are This is one formation that went over, and this is another formation. Uh he uh his story is that that he saw one go over, and all of a sudden, it

22:38speaker 1dawned on him, "Why don't I try to get a picture?" He was a fairly good amateur photographer. He took these with a Kodak 35. He shot them at a tenth of a second at 3.5 on Plus-X film. Uh he tracked them, and consequently, uh we don't know whether that this this blur is due to the movement of the object or the movement of his camera, since he shot them at a tenth of a second. And, this is the first formation that went over, and this is the second formation. Now, we've tried

23:06speaker 1uh every way that we know of to prove that these pictures are a fake. Uh I've talked to the kid, and uh in fact, I talked to him twice. We've had OSI talk to him about three times, and the final last time, they got him alone, and they said, "Now, look, uh this is we'll let you back out on this if you want to. We'll never tell anybody, as far as the newspaper's concerned, and everybody you've sold these pictures to, why they're they're really uh good photos. But, if you'll just confess to the OSI, why we'll drop it." But, he said, "No." He said, "These these are pictures of something that flew over Lubbock, Texas on uh well, this was these happened to be taken on the 31st of August." He said, "I don't know what they are, but," he said, "uh

23:47speaker 1I I took the pictures, and that's all I know." And, he signed a sworn statement for us, so we had to drop it right there. I mean, we've got no way to

23:52speaker 2Answer.

23:53speaker 1Uh

23:53speaker 2Uh did this picture check with the observations of those five?

23:57speaker 1No, sir. I was going to just mention that. The college professors say that these pictures are fake. I mean, they won't believe them at all. They say that things that they saw, uh they know were too dim to ever take a picture of. Now, uh we cross-checked with the kid on that, and he said, uh well, he said, "That's right." He said, "After I took these pictures," he said, "I didn't develop them for two days because," he said, "I just thought in my own mind that that I wouldn't even have an image because they were uh what I saw was, I thought, was too dim to take a picture of, but I just took a chance." So, he he took those pictures. Uh he finally developed them, and that's what he came out with, and he sold those, I believe he got $8 for the original set of prints in uh from a newspaper. Uh we had those prints over at the photo lab, and they

24:42speaker 1checked them out. I mean, they are an actual image. There's no doubt about that. Uh he could have taken a black sheet of paper and just punched holes in it and faked them very easily, but he uh swears up and down he didn't do that. Uh these things under a microscope uh show that that the uh relative position of these things vary just a little bit in each picture. Well, it's doubtful if he uh took a piece of cardboard

25:08speaker 1and just uh punched holes in it, if he would be smart enough to vary the holes, uh the position of the hole in each exposure. He'd probably just taken four shots of the same thing and maybe moved his camera to give him a little uh appearance of motion there. But, uh the actual uh exposures or images are moved just a little bit in in each exposure. Now, again, that uh could come from the fact that maybe he tipped his paper as he took the picture, but uh we don't know. We've never been able to prove that they were they were fakes. Uh the density on the negative uh compares to the density of a bright star. In other words, we used the same exposure, the same film, and went out and took a couple pictures of some bright planets, and it's uh the density of the negative is just a little bit more than that of a bright planet at night. So, uh

26:01speaker 1that's all we know about it. We haven't been able to

26:04speaker 2Did you find that you get two sets of lights in some cases, rather than a smear?

26:09speaker 1No, sir, we haven't. Uh we asked him about that, and he said he took the pictures, it looked like a straight uh a straight line. He he didn't notice two different formations. Now, I always hesitate to tell this because it could again be one big coincidence, but we If you plot those points on a piece of, I mean, enlarge them on a piece of graph paper and plot them out exactly, you'll see that as the uh consecutive in the consecutive frames, one row of lights, uh the back row, we'll say, moves up to the first row. And, uh then then it moves on ahead in in the third picture. Now, that that doesn't make sense at all because the fact that there are two different formations he took.

26:50speaker 2Are the spacing of the microscope of the second row the same as the first row, or different?

26:54speaker 1Yes, sir. I I have the plot here, if you'd be interested in seeing it a little later on. I'll show it. Right now, it's uh

27:01speaker 1it's we haven't been able to reach any conclusions at all. Now, the only There's only two possibilities that we can think of. And, uh here here are the plots of those. Only two possibilities that we can think of. One of them is that it's still one great big hoax, that the college professors just decided to see how much they could uh fool the people in Lubbock, Texas, and they planted these pictures with the kid. Uh the other thing is that there was It was known that there was a duck flight on in the area at that time, that the ducks were flying across Lubbock. Uh we tried, and and the people in Lubbock tried to see whether or not you could take a picture of ducks at night just from the reflection of the city lights, and that's impossible. So, if these pictures are true, uh are not fakes, why then the these pictures are not of ducks. We'll put it that way. Uh the college professors won't believe the duck story at all. I mean, they say those were not ducks. We can If they were ducks, they'd have to be at such and such an uh height to give that

28:00speaker 130° per second. If they were that low, why uh in fact, I think it comes out to be about 75 to 80 feet. Uh the ducks would have to be that low to be flying 60 miles an hour and go through that angle at that certain time, and they say they are not ducks. Now, that's the only possibility we have or the only idea of what they could be. They might be ducks reflecting the city lights, although it's it's still hard to believe that because uh just of all the circumstances, it just doesn't sound like ducks. A lot of people in in Lubbock who were looking for these objects on these nights did see ducks. And, when we were down there, they'd call us up, and they'd say, "I know what these lights are. They're ducks because I saw them, and I could see the wings flapping, and I could hear them honking, and I could see their necks sticking out, and you're wasting our good taxpayers' money coming down here talking about it because they were ducks." Now, uh but the once again, there is about half the people that saw these objects again say they were not ducks because they said, "We've lived in Lubbock all our life, and we've seen ducks for the last 30 years, and those were not ducks." So, we're up against a blank wall on on this cert- this one case. Now, we uh

29:17speaker 1We've reached several general, or I shouldn't say reached any conclusions, there's two or three general facts about all of the the sightings, the overall uh collection of sightings that we have. One of them is that on our good sightings, there's absolutely no noise ever reported connected with these objects, no matter how low they are. They may be uh reported as just being specks in the sky or down fairly low, and there's absolutely no noise reported. And, once again, we uh we don't know of any kind of a propulsion system that would uh that would do that. I mean, everything that we know of uh has some type of noise connected with it. Another thing is that we've had a lot of radar returns uh

30:00speaker 1But we have never had a visual sighting linked up with the radar return. We've had two or three reports of that, but we've never been able to pin them down enough, uh, and get enough facts about them to make sure that they were both looking at the same thing. Uh, they have had a project on this down at, uh, Holloman, and they've been very much interested in it because they've been seeing, uh, compare, on a comparative basis, more of these things around the Holloman and White Sands area. They did track something down there with their cinetheodolites. Uh, they don't know what it what it is, and it it could possibly be a a slow-moving daylight meteor. Now, I'm not an astronomer, but I understand such things exist. Uh, they they got pictures of it, and they were able to track it. However, they saw

30:43speaker 1about five, I think it's five or six of these things at once. Uh, it was right after they launched a missile, and they had their, uh, scan, yeah, uh, cinetheodolites pointed up in the air, and they saw these four or five things right behind the missile, and they got the word to swing over on those and forget the missile. And they're a little bit doubtful as to whether or not all stations tracked the same object. So, consequently, their readings are a little bit off, but they did come up, uh, with an altitude reading of about 150,000 feet. Uh, the speed was, uh, very great. They they came up with a speed of about 3,500 miles an hour, but, again, they won't back that up because they aren't they aren't sure of the conditions that these readings were made under. Uh,

31:26speaker 1that's the only time we've ever come really close to getting any, uh, any accurate data on these things. And I want to say again that it could be that it was a, uh, a meteor in in the daytime. Now, they have another type of, uh, phenomena or object or something floating around down in that area, and that's these green fireballs. Now, I don't know whether you've been reading about that in the paper, but there's a Dr. Lincoln LaPaz down in Albuquerque at the University of New Mexico who's been making a big deal out of these green fireballs. They appear to be, uh, similar to a meteor, except that they have a definite flat trajectory. Uh, they're reported to be of a brilliant, uh, greenish-blue color, and they, uh, they don't explode. I mean, they appear to be very low, uh, about a third or a fourth of the size of a full moon, and they're very low, and they just go out like that. They don't explode. Now, Dr. LaPaz's theory on this thing is that if it's a normal meteor, there should be a

32:24speaker 1terrific explosion because of the size of these things, uh, indicates that they're down low in the atmosphere, and there should be a terrific explosion when they, uh, when they get down low enough to explode. It's, uh, again, we don't know what they are. I mean, they actually exist. There's no doubt about it. I mean, it's not anybody's imagination because they've been reported by, well, Dr. LaPaz himself has has seen one, and and we've had some very fine reports, and they all, uh, follow the same path. There's a definite flat trajectory right across the, uh, well, parallel to the Earth's surface. Uh, they they go out with no explosion, and they're a brilliant, bright green. Green, uh, airline pilots see them, and maybe if they meet them head-on or something like that, they'll rack the airliner up, just about toss everybody out of the seats because they think they're going to have a head-on collision with this, uh, whatever it may be. Now, Cambridge, uh,

33:16speaker 1labs have been working on that for two years, and they came up with no conclusions whatsoever as to what they might be. So, I understand that we're going to take it over again and see if we can't possibly come up with, uh, some idea. We've talked to, uh, well, Dr. Kaplan's, uh, or, uh, LaPaz's ideas is that they come from Russia. Well, he said that they're using some kind of a self-destruction missile that and they're they're zeroing in on, uh, Los Alamos. Now, that's a a good story. I mean, it it, uh, sounds really exciting, and and there's a possibility. I mean, it we can't say that it isn't because we don't know what it is. Uh, we've talked to Dr. Kaplan quite a bit on this subject, uh, probably probably know him from, uh, the University of California. Uh, he thinks that they're either some kind of a, possibly, a new meteor that we, uh, are not familiar with or, uh, some phenomenon that's related to the aurora. Uh, he he claims that he can duplicate this color in his lab, and I I'm not, uh,

34:18speaker 1sure of just exactly how he does it. I believe he uses, uh, well, I don't know. I won't say. I've got a report, but I don't want to quote something I don't know about. But, anyway, he can duplicate this color, and he believes that that's what it is. Now, uh, as I say, that is a definite division of these things. I mean, they they definitely exist, and our problem is to find out, really find out what they are. If they're some kind of phenomena, well, then we can turn it over to the astronomers and let them take it, uh. If they should happen to come from Russia, why, then we'd better start finding out what they're trying to do on them.

34:51speaker 2How many of these green light reports do you have?

34:53speaker 1Oh, we have quite a few, sir. I'd hate to say. I mean, uh, I I couldn't tell exactly the number, but they started out, I believe in '49, didn't they, sir? Uh, there was a big outbreak of them in '49, and they seem to appear, uh, in January, or in December and January, in that period between the, uh, the years. And, uh, they coincide with a, uh, meteor shower that occurs at that time. I don't believe I know remember the name of it is. But for a long time, they tried to tie them in with that meteor shower. But just recently, now within the last year, they've begun to occur more on a, uh, over the whole year instead of coming at, at, uh, at one time. OSI, uh, Dr. LaPaz worked for OSI in '49 on these, and they tried to, uh, come up with a conclusion. They couldn't. Uh, they've also spent a lot of time trying to find any fragments, and have never been successful. I mean, they've been able to triangulate these things and get a heck of a lot of reports on people who've seen them, or seen one of them, and then, uh, work their triangulation like they do on large meteors, but they've never been able to find any, uh, parts. They, uh, went as far as to pick up, put a dust collector on a B-29 and try to fly through the area right after these things occurred, try to pick up any, uh, dust that they might have left in the upper atmosphere, but they didn't find anything at all that would indicate that anything unusual was going on. So, um, we work we're up against a stone wall on these things, too. I mean, all we've got is just people's ideas. We've got no proof as to what they actually may be.

36:27speaker 1believe uh one of our approaches on this thing is going to be the use of um diffraction gratings on cameras. Uh that's Dr. Kaplan's idea. Uh he says that we can uh and I mean I shouldn't say he says, well, he knows that we can take a very inexpensive camera and put a diffraction grating on it uh and give them to these guards around Sandia and White Sands and all these places where the guards are outdoors 24 hours a day. And every time they see something that's unusual, just

36:58speaker 1point the camera at it and take a picture. And then he says that he can take the uh reading and uh match him up in either by known objects or match him up in his lab and tell us uh what the composition is of this object that's emitting this light. Now, uh we haven't, that's just strictly in the planning stage now. We haven't done very much except Dr. Kaplan is now trying to figure out the cheapest camera that he can build for us and

37:23speaker 1and the most rugged camera so these guards can throw it around and still uh will get some decent pictures of these objects. Uh another thing that we've done is recently we've briefed Air Defense Command on this whole project and have got their cooperation in uh with their uh radar scope cameras. Uh as I mentioned before, we have had quite a few unknown radar returns. Uh these things have, the radar, the Air Defense Command radars tracked objects

37:50speaker 1going anywhere from 1,000 up to about 3,500 miles an hour. Uh we've never been able to determine, however, that these weren't malfunctions in the radar set or due to some type of atmospheric phenomenon. Uh we we've tried to get the weather charts uh at the time uh or weather conditions at the time this phenomenon has occurred and try to correlate that data and show that due to a certain type of weather condition that they had

38:17speaker 1this type of return. Now, uh we haven't had too much luck uh luck on that angle. So now we're going to try to get radar scope cameras and get pictures of this stuff, and then we'll know. Before, we've just had the radar uh observer's interpretation of what he saw on the scope. We think that with pictures, probably we can um do a little bit more with this. Now, another step further in that, and we haven't uh

38:38speaker 1done anything on this except talk about it, and it may get into the point where we're going to do this, and that is try to put in a a long focal length camera, uh try to match a local long focal length camera with the radar spinner. So that whenever this radar operator gets a return, uh all he has to do is poke a button, and this camera will take a picture of the area of the sky that the radar spinner is pointing at.

39:06speaker 1And in that, if if we get that far, and if we get a bad uh funny return, we'll say, and the usual return on the scope, and if we get an image, no matter how big the image is, on the uh photographic plate or on the film at the same time, well, then we can say that that this radar operator was actually picking up something. I mean, uh that would be a great help to us now because we don't uh know for sure if they're even picking anything up. But uh that's the next step, and it's still in the planning or even it's in the talking stage right now.

39:36speaker 1Um that's about the main thing we're going to try to do as far as future plans is concerned. We want to get uh try to get some concrete data to say that these things exist. Uh up to the present time, we we've got no real proof that anything even exists. The only thing we've got are reports from very reliable people that that do have a lot of details in them, but the details aren't the kind

40:00speaker 1that we want. I mean, they don't give us enough data as to the possible performance or anything else uh that we might need on these objects. Uh the official Air Force viewpoint uh is that we've got enough good reports from reliable people to be interested in this. Uh we can't back up any of these books by Scully or Keyhoe and say that we know that they're from Venus or that we know they're from Russia or that we even know they exist. I mean, there's a possibility that everything that's being reported is uh some as a balloon or as a meteor or ducks or anything you can think of that somebody just saw them from an odd angle or under odd lighting conditions and they look like something else. But, it's it's uh at the present time, we have enough faith in these people that have been turning in their reports to say that we we don't exactly believe that. I mean, we're going to have to get more proof before we can can say that everything that's being seen is some known object just viewed under uh different circumstances. Uh I could go on for a long time telling you about the good reports we've had. Uh I'd say about 20% uh of the of the 800 or 900 reports that we now have uh just cannot be explained. I mean, you can't say that looks like a meteor. You can't say that that that could be a balloon if there's a balloon in the area because it it just doesn't tie up. And most of these people have made these reports are uh well-established airline pilots, I mean, old pilots who've had a lot of flying time. Uh the people who've released these General Mills balloons have seen something. Uh the people at White Sands have seen very odd things. This Dr. LaPaz himself has seen a couple things floating over the mountains down in New Mexico that he didn't uh he couldn't explain. Now, we've got about 20% of our reports are like that, that we just we can't go up to them and say, "Now, you can't uh this can't be, you're nuts." I mean, that that would be our only answer on those. You've just you're just crazy. But, you uh can't go up to anybody and tell them that. I mean, they're they're they've seen something and we don't know what it is. Now, uh

42:07speaker 1Well, some of the big questions that enter our mind on this is, one, the no sound business. If it actually exists and there's no, there's some type of propulsion, but there's no sound, what could it possibly be? Another big question is, uh, and it's, uh, getting in the lines of psychology, uh, why or how could a person, uh, look up at night, or in the dusk, we'll say, or even in the daytime, and, and see some of these things that they report? Now, right along those lines, we had, at the same time these pictures were taken down at Lubbock, within two or three days of that time, two women were driving along in a car. And, uh, all of a sudden, they looked out over the Texas plains and they saw this, uh, object that they described as being top-shaped, like one of these old-fashioned tops you put a string around and pull. And it was silver, and it was hovering along over the prairie, and they drove up, uh, well, they approached it. And as they approached it, why, the thing began to take off like that. Well, now, we checked on these women and found out that they were just as reliable as your wives or anybody else. I mean, they didn't have any reputation of being, uh, habitual liars or stretching stories or anything like that. They were just good old Texas farm wives, is all they were. And, uh, we questioned them, but that's their story. I mean, they said, "That's what we saw. We don't know what it was. We're leaving it up to the Air Force to, uh, tell us what we saw."

43:27speaker 1Well, thunder, we can't tell them. Uh, once again, it, it goes down back to the point, uh, how much can people imagine? Uh, at the same time these Lubbock pictures were taken, why, uh, in fact, it's the same night, uh, a guard and his wife from the Sandia base in Albuquerque were sitting out in their backyard. And all of a sudden, they looked up and they saw this big dark shape go over. And they said that it was a, uh, it looked a lot like a flying wing type aircraft. And it was down about 150 feet, and it just scared the dickens out of them because it was so low. And they could see little exhaust, uh, flames on the back of the airplane. Well, we checked them again, and once again, we found out that they're just good, normal people. I mean, the guy's been a, uh, guard at Sandia for a good number of years, so he's reliable to that extent. I mean, they, they don't usually hire psychopathic cases to guard places like Sandia. And, uh, just out of curiosity, we sent these pictures down to that guy. And, uh, the OSI showed them to him. He said, "Yeah," he said, "that's what I saw." But he said, uh, "It was, uh, these little lights are the exhaust stacks that I saw."

44:37speaker 1And, uh, it happened on the same night that these pictures were taken, just about 2 hours before these people saw this thing at, at Lubbock. So, I mean, it, it's probably a coincidence. But again, you can't say it's a coincidence. I mean, we can't get enough facts to ever pin it down. But it, it's, uh, one of those things that's, that's just very interesting to work on. I mean, it'll drive you nuts after so long a time, but then we try to keep going on it. Well, that's about all that, uh, that I had.

45:09speaker 2What sort of performance data do you get on the radar return?

45:12speaker 1Uh, it it varies. It varies quite a bit. Usually high speed. By high speed, I mean anything over 1,000 miles an hour. Uh, they for a while, we we thought we had it pinned down, or our radar people did, because the return always went over the station. It came in, went through the ground clutter practically directly over the station, and went out the other side. Now, they claimed that that that that was an indication of uh some, I'm not sure, uh interference with our station, something like that. But lately, we they haven't been doing that. I mean, they'll they'll come in to the uh into the range, and they'll maybe make a turn and go out. Now, we had one interesting case in New Jersey lately. And uh this GCA operator was uh sitting there looking at his scope, and all of a sudden, he saw these two objects come in. They were coming in about 400, 500 miles an hour. And at the same time, a C-47 was coming in. He was going to land, this 47. Well, he noticed they were on a collision course, so he called the tower and said, "Tell those two unidentified airplanes they're on a collision course with this 47." So, the tower just called in the blind. The tower said, "There's no other airplanes out there." Radarman said, "Yes, there is." So, the tower just called in the blind and said uh, "You two unidentified airplanes, you're on a collision course with a 47." And just as they said that, these two returns made a turn. Now, uh once again, uh have we got coincidence, or have we actually got something? See, I mean, it uh

46:36speaker 3They speak English, too.

46:37speaker 1[laughter] So, that's about the only conclusion we can draw there, they understand English. But uh that's some of the things we run into. I mean, we run into a lot of that kind of stuff where we'll have uh a lot of uh small situations that all build up into a big one. And it might be just a coincidence. It might be we may put our imagination into it unconsciously, only we we try to keep away from that. We try to stay right in the straight and narrow. I mean, we don't want to uh be influenced either way on this thing. They may be from Mars, but if they are, we don't want to think they are, or we don't want to think they're all balloons. I mean, we try to stay right in the middle of the road. Now, we had a real interesting one from uh uh New Jersey, uh around

47:24speaker 2Sandy Hook, Monmouth.

47:25speaker 1Yeah, around Sandy Hook and Fort Monmouth here not too long ago. These pilots in a T-33 chased something. And just about 10 minutes later, all the radar stations in that area began to pick these objects up going back and forth all over the skies. And we thought, "Boy, this is it." So, we tore up there to find out, and why, the story sounded real fine. These T-33 pilots saw this great big dish-shaped thing over there, and he took out after it, and he couldn't catch it. And then, the radar stations began to pick up these signals, and they were clocking speeds up to 3,500 miles an hour and everything else. Well, it turned out that the pilots had seen a a big balloon. It was larger than a normal weather balloon, had been launched from Fort Monmouth. And they were a little bit mixed up with their rate of closure and stuff like that, had seen a balloon. And the radar uh crews, the first radar uh crew had had picked up a probably just an ordinary aircraft, but they were giving a demonstration to a bunch of colonels, and the operators got a little bit uh flustered on the whole thing, and they couldn't lock in this automatic tracking, so they assumed the thing must be going about 3,500 miles an hour. It turned out the reason they couldn't lock it in is they were just too excited and got a little bit fouled up in their procedures. And from then on, why, they were picking up weather balloons uh with these radar reflectors hanging on them and everything else. And and the students, uh incidentally, it turned out they were mostly student radar operators picking this stuff up. The uh headquarters had called in and hadn't explained anything. They just said uh, "Get on your radar scopes and look for these mysterious objects floating around." Well, that's all it took for these kids because, boy, they saw everything. Well, it uh what at first appeared to be a very good sighting just all broke down when we get enough facts. Now, 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 guess that's about all I had, and if you got any questions, why, we'd be very happy to discuss any aspect of this whole thing with you folks.

49:21speaker 2Have you seen any of these things?

49:23speaker 1No, sir, I haven't.

49:25speaker 2How about the thing you saw on the

49:26speaker 1Oh, I, yeah, I saw something on there. [laughter] But it was I it was just a uh large meteor, one of these green fireballs or something. It was uh I think it was one of those green fireballs down Texas. And uh but it it was that's all that I have ever seen.

49:44speaker 2I I may, at the risk of repeating, just uh sum up some of these points. Uh, one is uh Lieutenant Ruppelt mentioned around 800 cases that we have in our files. Uh,

50:00speaker 1We know that that's only a portion of the sightings that are made. Uh those are the ones that have managed to be reported to some military base and then through channels get to us. Uh 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. Uh we've even heard of them in

50:28speaker 1uh military organizations that have not been reported because I think it's almost a case of the airline pilots who 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 uh radar bomb scoring run of a B-29 out at St. Louis. And they uh they were following the B-29 into the uh initial point.

50:53speaker 1The operator noticed this plane flying at or uh an object at 48,000 feet. The B-29 was at 25,000 feet. He immediately thought, well, that that's possible. I mean, double harmonics or something. In any rate, he explained it away in his own mind. Well, then the uh blip started descending and on a collision course. And uh a quick check revealed that it was descending at a rate of something like 1,000 miles an hour.

51:23speaker 1He got a little more concerned. Still thought, well, possibly this is either in the radar or in the uh some atmospheric conditions. But then when the thing broke off, made a turn, and then another turn, took the course and disappeared, they just don't know what it is. Well, we find on these radar sightings that uh you're just left pretty much outside. I mean, you can't really dig in. You haven't got anything.

51:46speaker 1Because uh there's so many of them that can be explained uh as there's a possibility that it is something either in the atmosphere or in the set. Uh we had one good one not too long ago and uh one of our electronics people pulled out a textbook and uh gee, there was a case written up in a textbook exactly what had been reported to us. Uh a hovering object that made a rapid rate of uh ascent and then

52:12speaker 1took off on a course. Well, such a thing has occurred apparently because of weather phenomenon. It's been reported and pretty thoroughly written up. So, we find that whole area of sightings, I mean, you're just left without any answers. Um One point that was not brought out uh is our relationship with uh Battelle.

52:37speaker 2Oh, yes. I forgot to mention.

52:39speaker 1Uh Battelle Memorial Institute. Uh they're one of the contractors who do work for us and

52:51speaker 1Uh 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 uh we're looking for help. We 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.

53:13speaker 1So, if we get a case that calls for an astronomer, we can quickly get an astronomer to work on it. Uh Another thing is possibly a clipping service that will bring in a mass of reports that we don't have, and if any of them are worth following up, we can. But our problem, as you've probably seen, is just getting facts. Uh We don't have enough facts to do anything other than explain

53:40speaker 1that 80% of these roughly are known objects. That that we can. Possibly. As a matter of fact, they're not 80% definitely proved, but say 60 definitely. I mean, there's no question in our mind. It was a plane or something else. Uh Then uh and these are rough figures, say 20% that maybe they could have been a plane, a balloon, or a meteor.

54:06speaker 1And then there's that 20% like the green fireballs and the lights that we just do not have an answer for. Now, one thing that people have suggested, well, how about a feasibility study?

54:18speaker 1A feasibility of what? The unknown. Well, we're stuck there.

54:24speaker 3Have all of the intelligence officers of air bases in the US been alerted on this and they report everything? Is the military generally alerted?

54:34speaker 1Yes, uh we we should have brought that out earlier. There is a directive uh from uh Headquarters USAF that establishes a reporting procedure. Now, we've felt for a long time, like most directives, uh particularly if there's no activity on it, people forget about it. I mean, it gets stuck off in the file. We've also felt that it was not a very good one. It had a lot of weak points in it.

54:59speaker 1So, we prepared a new directive uh and in the meantime suggested that they go ahead and and remind all of these people that there is a reporting procedure set up so that, you know, it would uh bring reports in. And the new directive has just recently been coordinated, I believe, has it not?

55:15speaker 2Yes, it's gone back to D/I right now.

55:18speaker 1And it should be out. Now, uh Lieutenant Ruppelt, in getting around on these cases, of course, does a lot of missionary work. I mean, when he heads a base, I mean, he briefs them pretty thoroughly on our problem. And the places he's hit, I'm sure, are well aware of how it's done. I'm equally sure there are a number of these places that just don't know. They probably have the directive somewhere, but

55:40speaker 3I was just thinking of my own case. I knew you folks were interested from this association and others, but no, still any any official channel, I never heard that there was any interest.

55:52speaker 1Right.

55:53speaker 3How about the Ground Observer Corps? They have 100,000 people out there and they're quite active now. Are they alerted?

56:00speaker 2We uh they are to a certain extent. So, we've we've talked about that quite a bit. And we don't know whether it's it's worth alerting those people. Now, they're not now on a 24-hour basis. They will they hope to get them on a 24-hour basis soon. But uh uh we don't know exactly how far to go. I mean, we're afraid maybe if we'd uh alert that number of people, then then everybody in the United States they'd get excited again. That's the thing we're trying to uh keep out of this thing is this excitement business. Now, in 2 weeks,

56:30speaker 2a week from this coming Friday, Life is coming out with a with an article on these uh objects. And we've been working closely with Life. And uh they supposedly are going to print what we told them to. I hope they do. Uh They're going to put it on a factual basis. I mean, just about like this briefing. In other words, uh there may be something to it, but we don't know. And uh we feel that that that report may tend to take the mysteriousness and hysteria out of the thing and just get people to uh give us a few reports

57:02speaker 2in a, well, people with good common sense instead of all these nut letters that we get occasionally. Another thing, uh Colonel Kirkland referred to this newspaper clipping service. We hope to get that started before this Life magazine article comes out and keep it going over, say, a period of a year and see how the peaks in the newspaper publicity uh correspond with the peaks in this in the reports that we get. Uh We we feel that after Life comes out, why then several other magazines will undoubtedly

57:29speaker 2pick this stuff up. A True magazine is supposed to be coming out with an article uh sometime within the next couple months. It will be slanted the other way. It's going to be written by one of these science fiction writers. And uh it should give us no end of trouble. We haven't been able to get True to uh cooperate with us at all. I mean, I shouldn't say that. They probably would, but but their type of magazine, I mean, they sell the sensational items and they don't uh they want to play it up. And then, I believe Look is

57:59speaker 2also thinking about coming out with an article. So, uh magazines are going to follow Life, and we'll probably we'll run into a little bit of fly again on this thing.

58:11speaker 3Is it un- is it unlikely uh that other that any of these magazines have facts or data, we would say, withheld just for the sake of being sensational?

58:21speaker 2They uh Life magazine has a lot of information that we do not have on on different sightings. Uh They have some very good sightings, too. I mean, uh they've called in some uh pretty important people around the United States. They won't they're very hesitant to tell you who works for them as their consultants. But uh they have got some uh pretty good sightings that we have never heard of, and they're going to use those in their article, although they have checked those with us. Uh

58:49speaker 2The two or three old standbys that everybody always plays up, such as this Mantell case down in Kentucky where this guy got killed chasing one of them, supposedly, uh the one up in uh Sioux Falls, South Dakota where the uh F-51 pilot fought with this thing for 15 minutes, and a few of those that that are outstanding as far as the science fiction writers are concerned, Life is going to leave out. They're not going to dig those up again and rehash them again.

59:16speaker 3Was it ever established uh what caused uh Mantell's death and his disintegration?

59:22speaker 2Uh No, uh well, they think, I mean, the official report is, and I I tend to believe it, is that he didn't have any oxygen at all, and he just climbed up till he passed out, and then the airplane went into a dive and just tore itself to pieces. I think that that probably uh What he was chasing uh is still open to discussion. It was either probably either Venus or one of these great big uh Skyhook balloons that General Mills puts up because there was one lost in the area at the time, although they were never able to say

59:49speaker 2uh where it was, except that it was either over Kentucky or Tennessee. That's all they've been able to pin down, and they think that that might have been it. But uh

59:58speaker 3Is this still

60:00speaker 1classified top secret?

60:01speaker 2Uh, no, sir, it isn't. Uh, that's another, uh, no. Uh, we've we actually we carry this confidential, the overall project. Uh, we're trying to get it dropped down to restricted now because, uh, Life is going to come out with a lot of material we've given them that is classified, or was classified at one time. Uh, the only time this was classified top secret was right after it came out. Uh, we've been carrying this confidential. There are some aspects of it we'll have to keep classified as secret, or maybe higher, when we start, uh, listing air defense radar, uh, stations, uh, possible tie-in with some of our latest developments and things like that. We'll have to keep that classified, but just, uh, oh, just the details of a sighting, uh, we're going to try to declassify to restricted.

60:51speaker 2Because we've had trouble in the past on that, uh, some newspaper will call up and say, uh, "Big sighting up somewhere." And we'll say, "Yes, we've heard about it." And they'll say, "What's the results?" We'll say, "Well, we can't tell you about that. It's classified." So, immediately, they came out with a big story about the Air Force just picked up a spaceship somewhere and they won't tell us about it. And, uh, that's the thing we're trying to get away from. I mean, we don't want to, uh, excite anybody on the project.

61:15speaker 1There is one other area that's classified, and that's where we have reports on people.

61:20speaker 2Yes.

61:21speaker 1You know, their their background, to try to determine whether they're reliable or not. Uh, we run into one interesting, uh, bit of discussion on this classification because, uh, there're some people who say, "Well, now, these could be from Russia," which is true, it could be. "Therefore, uh, we're doing them a great service reporting them [laughter] in our papers very carefully, they get plots." Uh, which is true. Uh, but we, uh, but we feel that the papers, when they get one, are going to report it, and then they're going to come to us for what we know on it. It's inevitable if the papers pick it up. Uh, so that's one reason we like this reporting channel that's established, that, uh, if anybody sights one of them, that it's not too illogical for somebody if they see something in the air to call the nearest Air Force base. I mean, it's one of the first things they would think of. Maybe they've got something in the air. And, uh, we have found, though, uh, just as an example of this T-33 case you mentioned, uh, the reporters were right on hand to discuss this thing with the pilots when they landed.

62:29speaker 1And took pictures of them. [laughter]

62:34speaker 2We found out that, uh, in the New York area, some paper, I couldn't tell you which one it is, monitors VHF. Uh, monitors all the air traffic in the area. And, uh, I don't know why they do it, but, uh, they do. And, uh, that's where they picked up that T-33 incident, was monitoring the air traffic. Now, I heard two different stories, one that the newspaper actually has a, uh, a setup themselves to monitor it, and another one that they have two or three hams in the area, uh, uh, alerted to call them if anything happens. But this T-33 pilot did call the tower and told them about it, and, uh, the newspapers were right, uh, right there.

63:12speaker 2So, uh, news we've found out one thing, and that is the newspapers, uh, surpass the Air Force in their intelligence channels. [laughter] They are good. I mean, there's just no getting around it.

63:23speaker 1They're the best. [laughter]

63:27speaker 2So, uh, we, uh, we can't buck them. If you can't lick them, join them. That's about our policy.

63:33speaker 1Well, actually, it goes a little further than that. I mean, it's a wonderful ally. Uh, I think the project, uh, uh, has varied in its handling a lot just through, uh, difference in opinion, or, you know, changes in opinion. Uh, there's been great interest in it, and then it would fall away, uh, not too much interest, and then great interest. And that's officially, too, as well as public. Uh, we feel that by, uh, going right down the line, taking every case we get, and trying to get additional facts, and encouraging anybody and everybody to give us information. There are a lot of groups that are interested in this. There's a, uh, I don't know whether any of you read the Time article a few weeks ago on the saucers. Well, there's a group out on the West Coast that's, uh, in their spare time, trying to get all of these cases they can, and work on them. We feel that, uh, uh, that group, if we're quite frank with them, would be, uh, very cooperative, and help us. I mean, we're not trying to hide anything. We're trying to get help. Uh, you do have a problem, uh, in how far you can go publicly, but I think possibly this Life-type article, uh, will help, if they if they publish what we expect.

64:53speaker 3This medium has been declassified in compliance with applicable executive orders, statutes, and regulations.