The Committee to Review Project Blue Book: How a Public-Relations Crisis Became the Condon Study, 1966-1967

Source file: DOW-UAP-D092_DAF-Committee-to-Review-Project-Bluebook_1966-1967.pdf Originating agency: U.S. Air Force — Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) and its Secretariat (AFBSA) Document type: Office working file — meeting statistics, memoranda, correspondence, and enclosures Date: 1965-1969 (bulk 1966-1967; a 1953 enclosure) Classification: Mostly UNCLASSIFIED; several marked "For Official Use Only"; the 1953 enclosure downgraded from SECRET Page count: 85 (all read) VIRIN: 260710-D-D0360-1077 PURSUE Release: 4

Summary

This is the working folder of the U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) Secretariat concerning the "Ad Hoc Committee to Review Project Blue Book" — known to history as the O'Brien Committee, after its chairman, the physicist Dr. Brian O'Brien. The committee met once, on 3 February 1966, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and the recommendation it produced — that the Air Force hand the investigation of significant UFO sightings to university-based scientific teams — led directly to the University of Colorado (Condon) study and, ultimately, to the closure of Project Blue Book in 1969.

The file's value lies not in the recommendation itself, which is well known, but in how candidly it reveals what lay behind it. A blunt internal memorandum by Lt. Col. Harold A. Steiner of 21 January 1966 records that the Air Force information office (SAFOI) had received and answered more than 3,300 letters on UFOs in a single year, "including many from the President and the Congress," and that "the problem essentially boils down to one that is typified by the question, 'When did you stop beating your wife?'" Steiner wrote plainly that SAFOI wanted "some prestigious scientific group" to help "get the Air Force off the hook," adding that none of the Air Force's other public-relations problems — "sonic boom, supersonic transport, and integration" — had created the poor public image that the UFO problem did.

Bound into the folder are two rare enclosures. The first is a complete, sanitized copy of the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel report of January 1953 — the "Durant report" — which Steiner sent to Colonel Burger with the note, "Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty." It contains the famous "training and debunking" mass-media program, alongside the recommendation to watch civilian UFO groups for possible "subversive purposes." The second is a UFO bibliography of 129 articles and 21 books, compiled in the Office of the USAF Chief Scientist.

Research Article

The document and its provenance

Unlike most items in this archive, this is not a single report but an office folder: a mixed collection of meeting-statistics sheets, agendas, memoranda for record, transmittal letters, and routing slips accumulated in the SAB Secretariat over several years. The earliest material dates to 28 September 1965 and the latest to 28 February 1969. The offices involved include the SAB Secretariat (AFBSA), the information office (SAFOI), the Directorate of Science and Technology (AFRST), and the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) at Wright-Patterson, successor to the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC).

The origin: a public-relations crisis

The wheels were set in motion by a memorandum from Major General E. B. LeBailly, the Air Force Director of Information, dated 28 September 1965. LeBailly asked the Scientific Advisory Board for "a working scientific panel composed of both physical and social scientists" to review Project Blue Book — "its resources, methods, and findings." Embedded in the request is an admission that has been quoted ever since: "However, many of the reports that cannot be explained have come from intelligent and technically well qualified individuals whose integrity cannot be doubted." LeBailly noted that as of 30 June 1965 the Air Force had investigated 9,267 reports, of which 663 remained unexplained.

The most candid memorandum in the file is Steiner's of 21 January 1966, documenting his visit to SAFOI. There he framed the problem as the information office saw it: any answer the Air Force gives "tends to incriminate the Air Force as a concealer of information and at the very least detracts from its image." Steiner laid out three options — categorically deny UFOs exist, impugn the sanity of the witness, or investigate as best it could and admit as much — and concluded that only the third was tenable, but that it "leads to admissions that there are a certain percentage of UFO sightings that the Air Force cannot identify." In a passage a reader underlined, Steiner wrote: "This approach keeps people like Fuller... and Major Kehoe [Keyhoe] in business because it provides them with continuous ammunition and the AF has no rejoiner [sic]."

The 3 February 1966 meeting and the committee's reasoning

The committee — chaired by Dr. Brian O'Brien, with members Dr. Launor F. Carter (System Development Corporation), Dr. Jesse Orlansky (IDA), Dr. Richard Porter (General Electric), Dr. Carl Sagan (Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory), and Dr. Willis Ware (RAND) — met once, on 3 February 1966, at FTD headquarters. It reviewed "the Robertson Report, dated 17 January 1953," and selected case files from Project Blue Book.

The members' comments, transcribed during the "writing session," survive in the folder and reveal the skeptical scientific reasoning behind the recommendation. Dr. Porter argued that in 18 years of data collection, "Moon Watch" teams and amateur astronomers systematically scanning the night sky had never reported a UFO, concluding that "when the sky is observed by scientifically-trained or scientifically-oriented personnel, UFOs are not observed." Dr. Sagan proposed that the Air Force conduct "some unannounced controlled experiments to check out the techniques" and recommended statistical analyses of the UFO data. Sagan also sharply criticized the shallowness of existing investigation: a New Hampshire sighting explained as B-47 aircraft "were assumed to be the source of the UFO. However, no attempt was made to correlate the time of sighting or place of sighting with the navigation logs of any of the B-47s."

The recommendation and its implementation

The final recommendation, as recorded in a memorandum for record of 20 April 1966, was that the Air Force form "areal investigation teams composed of representatives from universities" to cover the continental United States. Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown accepted it in a memorandum to the Chief of Staff on 5 April 1966: "I believe that the Committee's recommendations should be accepted and arrangements made to contract for a scientific team to investigate in depth certain selected reported sightings of UFO's." At the 19 April implementation meeting in the Pentagon, the practical concerns emerged — including the most revealing line in the file: "Since the problem is 99% public relations, it is essential that the investigating teams have some modicum of skill in press relations." The meeting also proposed that "Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Dr. Donald Menzel form the nucleus of a Consultant-Advisor team," and listed candidate universities — among them the University of Colorado, which ultimately received the contract.

The Robertson Panel report bound into the file

The most extraordinary item in the folder is a complete, sanitized copy of the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel report of 14-18 January 1953. Steiner passed it to Colonel Robert Burger on 1 May 1967 with a handwritten note: "Attached is an unclassified version of the report of the CIA sponsored Scientific Advisory Panel on UFO's. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty." Every CIA identity and the agency's own name are blacked out throughout.

The report contains some of the most famous passages in UFO history. The panel concluded unanimously "that there was no evidence of a direct threat to national security in the objects sighted," but recommended "a broad educational program" with "two major aims: training and 'debunking.'" The debunking aim, it wrote, "would result in reduction in public interest in 'flying saucers'... As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the 'secret' is known." It was to be carried out "by mass media such as television, motion pictures, and popular articles," and among the suggested channels were "Walt Disney, Inc." and the broadcaster Arthur Godfrey. On civilian UFO groups, the panel held that "such organizations should be watched because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking... The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind." In its analysis of the Tremonton, Utah, and Great Falls, Montana, films, the panel rejected the Navy Photo Interpretation Laboratory's conclusions and stated its governing principle: "In other words, the burden of proof is on the sighter, not the explainer."

The bibliography and the Thailand thread

At the end of the file (pp. 78-85) is a comprehensive bibliography — 129 articles and 21 books on UFOs from 1946 to 1966 — compiled in the Office of the USAF Chief Scientist. An intriguing side-thread is Dr. Orlansky's 1967 correspondence, which linked the O'Brien report to the mysterious reports of "helicopter flights" in northeastern Thailand near Laos — reports no one at the U.S. Embassy could authenticate, and which were described as "very much like the reports of UFO's." A copy of the report was forwarded to the Bangkok embassy.

Significance

This is a foundational document for understanding how U.S. Air Force UFO policy was actually run. It records, in the participants' own words, that the committee which led to the Condon study and the closure of Project Blue Book was conceived overwhelmingly as a public-relations remedy ("the problem is 99% public relations"; "get the Air Force off the hook"), not as an open scientific inquiry. It preserves a complete, sanitized Robertson Panel report showing the CIA-sponsored 1953 recommendation to "debunk" UFOs through mass media and to watch civilian groups — alongside a rare, on-the-record admission from a 1967 SAB officer that "the names have been changed to protect the guilty." It is not a "smoking gun" of an unresolved incident, but as a single, provenance-clean folder tying the Robertson Panel (1953), the O'Brien Committee (1966), and the Condon study (1966-1969) into one documented policy chain, its documentary value is high.

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Notable Quotes

"However, many of the reports that cannot be explained have come from intelligent and technically well qualified individuals whose integrity cannot be doubted." -- Maj. Gen. LeBailly, 28 September 1965, page 22

"SAFOI wants some pretigious [sic] scientific group to look at the UFO problem in depth and come up with a position that will help get the Air Force off the hook." -- Steiner memorandum, page 43

"Since the problem is 99% public relations, it is essential that the investigating teams have some modicum of skill in press relations." -- Memorandum for record, 19 April 1966 meeting, page 9

"Attached is an unclassified version of the report of the CIA sponsored Scientific Advisory Panel on UFO's. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty." -- Steiner, handwritten, 1 May 1967, page 47

"The 'debunking' aim would result in reduction in public interest in 'flying saucers'... As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the 'secret' is known." -- Robertson Panel report, page 68

"In other words, the burden of proof is on the sighter, not the explainer." -- Robertson Panel report, page 62