For years rumors have circulated to the effect that the Central
Intelligence Agency has been deeply implicated in the
UFO mystery and in the crashed UFO controversy in
particular. These assertions are further bolstered by the contents
of the Majestic 12 documents. Nevertheless, at an
official level at least, the CIA has only confirmed
its direct involvement in one UFO study – the so-called Robertson Panel.
To fully understand the official story of
the
Robertson Panel, take note of the following from the National
Reconnaissance Office (NRO) historian, Gerald Raines:
In January 1953, H.
Marshall Chadwell [CIA Director of Scientific
Intelligence] and H. P. Robertson, a noted physicist from
the California Institute of Technology, put together a distinguished
panel of nonmilitary scientists to study the UFO issue. It
included
Robertson as chairman; Samuel A. Goudsmit, a nuclear
physicist from the Brookhaven National Laboratories; Luis Alvarez,
a high-energy physicist; Thornton Page, the deputy director
of the Johns Hopkins Operations Research Office and an expert on
radar and electronics; and Lloyd Berkner, a director of the
Brookhaven National Laboratories and a specialist in geophysics.
The charge to the panel was to review the available evidence on UFOs
and to consider the possible dangers of the phenomena to US national
security. The panel met from 14 to 17 January 1953. It reviewed
Air Force data on UFO case histories and, after spending 12
hours studying the phenomena, declared that reasonable explanations
could be suggested for most, if not all, sightings.
For example,
after reviewing motion-picture film taken of a UFO sighting near
Tremonton, Utah, on 2 July 1952 and one near Great Falls, Montana,
on 15 August 1950, the panel concluded that the images on the
Tremonton film were caused by sunlight reflecting off seagulls and
that the images at Great Falls were sunlight reflecting off the
surface of two Air Force interceptors.
The panel concluded unanimously that there was no evidence of a direct
threat to national security in the UFO sightings. Nor could the
panel find any evidence that the objects sighted might be
extraterrestrials. It did find that continued emphasis on UFO
reporting might threaten "the orderly functioning" of the government
by clogging the channels of communication with irrelevant reports
and by inducing "hysterical mass behavior" harmful to constituted
authority. The panel also worried that potential enemies
contemplating an attack on the United States might exploit the UFO
phenomena and use them to disrupt US air defenses.
To meet these problems, the panel recommended that the
National Security Council debunk UFO reports
and institute a policy of public education to reassure the public of
the lack of evidence behind UFOs. It suggested using the mass media,
advertising, business clubs, schools, and even the Disney
corporation to get the message across. Reporting at the height of
McCarthyism, the panel also recommended that such private UFO groups
as the Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators in Los Angeles and the
Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Wisconsin be monitored for
subversive activities.
The Robertson panel's
conclusions were strikingly similar to those of the earlier Air
Force project reports on SIGN and GRUDGE
and to those of the CIA's own OSI Study Group.
All investigative groups found that UFO reports indicated no
direct threat to national security and no evidence of visits by
extra-terrestrials.
Following the Robertson
panel findings, the Agency abandoned efforts to draft an NSCID
on UFOs.
The Scientific Advisory Panel on UFOs (the
Robertson
panel) submitted its report to the IAC, the Secretary of
Defense, the Director of the Federal Civil Defense
Administration, and the Chairman of the National Security
Resources Board. CIA officials said no further
consideration of the subject appeared warranted, although they
continued to monitor sightings in the interest of national security.
Philip Strong and
Fred Durant from OSI
also briefed the Office of National Estimates on the findings. CIA
officials wanted knowledge of any Agency interest in the subject of
flying saucers carefully restricted, noting not only that the
Robertson panel report was classified but also that any
mention of
CIA sponsorship of the panel was forbidden. This
attitude would later cause the Agency major problems relating to its
credibility.
Despite the history of the CIA’s involvement in the UFO
controversy as presented by Haines and the Agency
itself, suspicions abound that the full story has yet to be told. Victor Marchetti, formerly of the CIA, has stated
that he heard from within “high-levels” of the Agency accounts of
the bodies of “little gray men” recovered from a crashed UFO
held at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio.
Similarly,
the late UFO investigator Major Donald Keyhoe learned from
insider sources that the purpose of the Robertson Panel was to
debunk and demystify the UFO subject and to allow the CIA
to continue its UFO investigations at a far more covert
level – something that ties in with the material presented in
the
Majestic documents.
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