Midway through the letter, McDonald mentioned Low’s memorandum from August 1966. He had heard about this memo and, “since it was in the open files,” had asked for a copy. McDonald then quoted the memorandum in full. “I am rather puzzled by the viewpoints expressed there,” he wrote, “but I gather that they seem entirely straightforward to you, else this part of the record would, presumably, not be available for inspection in the open project files.”
He continued on for several more pages, concluding:
I’m not opposed to negative findings—on UFOs or other scientific questions; what bothers me is that it appears that these negative findings were being adumbrated as early as January 1966, and perhaps even earlier.
To make sure that Low could not possibly ignore the letter, McDonald sent a copy to the project’s open files, in hopes that “the more open the discussion, the sooner I shall be straightened out on points where I am either in outright error or where I am making unreasonable arguments.”
The letter arrived in Boulder on Monday, February 5, 1968. Low was out of town, and the staff read it first. He returned the next day but did not see the letter until 4 P.M., when Mary Lou Armstrong called it to his attention. As she later recounted, “Bob exploded.” Whoever had given that memo to McDonald should be fired, said Low furiously. He phoned Condon, who reacted in like fashion.
Meetings in Condon’s office dominated the rest of the week. Just before 11 A.M. on the morning of Wednesday, February 7, Low summoned Saunders to Condon’s office. Did you know of the existence of the memo, Condon asked Saunders. Yes, said Saunders. Did McDonald know about it? Yes. How long did you know this? A couple of months. Why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t think it was necessary, since McDonald was a friend of the project.
Condon pointed his finger at Saunders. “For an act like that, you deserve to be ruined professionally!” Low asked Saunders why he was dissatisfied with his and Condon’s way of running the project. “Haven’t we let you do everything you wanted to do?” Saunders brought up several issues, including the failure to resolve their problems from September. When Condon asked Saunders if he gave the memo to McDonald, Saunders hedged significantly. No, he said—since it was not he, but the small group to which he was a part that did.
When Norm Levine arrived at 11:30, Low physically ushered Saunders out of the room. “We don’t want you here anymore.” Levine pointed to the chair Saunders had been sitting in and asked, “Is this the victim’s chair?” From Levine, Condon finally learned it had been a group effort. He considered Levine’s actions treacherous, he said, and told him not to discuss the meeting with other project members, nor to communicate with McDonald. Levine was “not prepared to do that,” to which Condon replied, “I’m not sure what use you could be to the project anymore.” “I guess that’s it, then,” said Levine, and he walked out.
Condon and Low summoned staff members, one by one, for the rest of the day. That evening, and the next day, they met with Thurston Manning, the school’s vice president and Dean of Faculties, and Stuart Cook, chairman of the Psychology Department. On the eighth, Condon told Armstrong that Levine and Saunders were going to be fired. Low typed the letters himself, and Condon signed them.
On Friday morning, February 9, Condon called Roy Craig into his office. It was Craig’s first visit there. As expected, Low was also present. Craig told Condon he knew of the memorandum “and was quite concerned about its implications until frank discussions with you relieved my qualms about those apparent implications.” For this, and the fact that he had not been present when the memo was given to McDonald, Craig kept his job with the project. He left the meeting, however, “deeply concerned” about the project’s viability.
That day, journalist Roger Harkins wrote about the events, including revelations about the Low memorandum. While interviewing Condon, Harkins became convinced that Condon “honestly didn’t know anything about that memo until a couple of days ago.” Off the record, Condon revealed to Harkins that, in contrast to his statement to the press, in which he announced Saunders and Levine had been discharged for incompetence, the real reason was “contumacy,” that is, insubordination.
Not surprisingly, the credibility of the Colorado Project suffered in the aftermath of the firings. McDonald soon told the press about the “entirely inadequate job” by the Colorado Project, and the general media treatment angered Condon. Publicly, he told the press that McDonald was probably jealous, “another case of an Arizonan wanting some Colorado water.” Privately, he phoned the president of the University of Arizona and charged that McDonald was “unethical” and had “stolen” the Low memorandum from committee files, that McDonald’s act was “treacherous” and “disloyal.”
