Chapter 8
Winners and Losers: 1966 to 1969
My own present opinion, based on two years of careful study, is that
UFOs are probably extraterrestrial devices engaged in something that
might very tentatively be termed “surveillance.”
If “they” discover you, it is an old but hardly invalid rule of thumb, “they” are your technological superiors.
[N]othing has come from the study of UFOs in the past twenty-one years that has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us leads us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.
COLORADO TO THE RESCUE
It was not merely the UFO activity itself, but the publicity around it, that had made the air force situation intolerable. Once it settled upon the University of Colorado for deliverance, it moved quickly. On September 19, AFR 200-2 was superseded by AFR 80-17, which stipulated that some data from UFO reports would not be sent to Colorado:
Every effort will be made to keep all UFO reports unclassified. However, if it is necessary to classify a report because of method of detection or other factors not related to the UFO, a separate report including all possible information will be sent to the University of Colorado.
Item #5 of Paragraph 12 also restated that all radar evidence of UFOs was automatically classified and could not be discussed or revealed to the public. 1
On October 6, 1966, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research formally contracted with the University of Colorado at Boulder to conduct a “serious, objective, scientific, and independent investigation” of the UFO phenomenon. The study was to be directed by physicist Dr. Edward U. Condon, assisted by University of Colorado administrator Robert Low. The air force allocated $313,000 for the project, which was planned to run from November 15, 1966, to January 1968.
The decision appealed to all parties, including Hynek, Keyhoe, the Lorenzens, and McDonald. The relief was so strong that a body other than the air force would do an official study of UFOs, people assumed it had to be better than what the air force had inflicted upon the public.
The honeymoon was brief, however. Condon immediately demonstrated his dislike for the entire subject and his support for the air force position. On October 8, he was widely quoted as saying it was “highly improbable” UFOs existed. “The view that UFOs are hallucinatory will be a subject of our investigation,” he said, “to discover what it is that makes people imagine they see things.” The air force had done a good job, he told the Denver Post. “About 95 percent of the UFO reports are relatively easily identified,” he said. “With more information, others could probably be explained ... [which] indicates an appalling lack of public understanding.” Low’s remarks were similarly disparaging, but he acknowledged that “you don’t say no to the air force.”2
At the same time, James McDonald made the news. All year long, McDonald had been studying the old reports, interviewing hundreds of witnesses. For a scientist of world stature, as McDonald was, this was unprecedented. His analyses of older cases laid waste to the conclusions of Menzel, Klass, and the air force. For good reason, the air force feared James McDonald. So, after working diligently on the UFO problem for most of the year, McDonald went public on October 4, 1966. First to reporters in Tucson, and the next day at the University of Arizona Department of Meteorology colloquium, he gave his views on the reality of UFOs and the concealment of information. The faculty was wary; one of McDonald’s friends called the decision “professionally risky.”3
On October 7, McDonald spoke to reporters about the Robertson Panel report, which he had seen the previous June at Wright-Patterson AFB. The CIA had ordered the air force to debunk UFOs, he said. A few days later, he spoke at the American Meteorological Society meeting in Washington, D.C.
The speech was explosive:
