After the dramatic Chiles-Whitted sighting, the members of Project Sign prepared an “Estimate of the Situation.” No copy of this has ever surfaced. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, the air force flatly denied its existence. However, Ruppelt claimed to see one of the 1948 originals, as did Air Force Maj. Dewey Fournet, who prepared an affidavit in the late 1950s that confirmed the document’s existence. Several researchers have looked for this document. UFO researcher Jan Aldrich, who searched Directorate of Intelligence and ATIC documents at the National Archives II, estimated that perhaps 40 percent of the material was withdrawn at its time of declassification in 1987. “Everyone had a say on withdrawal,” he wrote, “CIA, DOD, USN, British Government, etc.”
Regarding the Estimate itself, Ruppelt wrote:
The situation was the UFOs; the estimate was that they were interplanetary! When the estimate was completed, typed, and approved, it started up through channels to higher-command echelons. It drew considerable comment but no one stopped it on its way up.
The Top Secret Estimate then reached Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, who rejected it. A group from ATIC went to see Vandenberg to reinforce their argument, but to no avail. Ruppelt said that some months later the report was completely declassified and “all but a few copies” were burned. Aldrich wrote that Ruppelt’s stated method for the destruction of the documents—declassification and burning—is incorrect procedure, and why he said it, “a mystery.”
The report was also said to have concluded that aliens were making a full-scale observation of the Earth, but that attack did not seem imminent. Officials decided to maintain secrecy until they gathered more information. Ruppelt told Keyhoe privately, “The general said it would cause a stampede. ... How could we convince the public the aliens weren’t hostile when we didn’t know it ourselves?”
A policy change ensued. At Project Sign, the ET hypothesis lost prestige. Everyone involved in writing the report was reassigned. Flying saucers were now to be explained in a more “down to earth” fashion.9
All indications show that the team at Sign was level-headed and serious about the problem of UFOs. It is reasonable to suppose, then, that other prominent figures also took the Chiles-Whitted sighting seriously—and by extension the entire UFO phenomenon. If so, then Vandenberg’s conclusion would have been exactly what Keyhoe said it was: a means to keep the low-level investigation at Project Sign from straying into highly classified territory. In such a situation, Vandenberg would certainly not want his staffers to know very much.
While the Estimate of the Situation was being prepared, Gen. Charles P. Cabell, head of the USAF Directorate of Intelligence, ordered Air Force Intelligence Headquarters to prepare its own analysis of the UFO situation. This document, completed in December, was prepared jointly with the Office of Naval Intelligence, and titled “Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the United States.” Some have referred to it as the “Ghost of the Estimate,” as a kind of watered-down version of the Estimate, but the two documents are independent. Indeed, as the Analysis was prepared by USAF Intelligence, which superseded the authority of ATIC, the Analysis also superseded the Estimate.10
Meanwhile, still in the immediate aftermath of the Eastern Air Lines UFO sighting, President Truman began receiving formal UFO briefings.
TRUMAN, LANDRY, AND UFOs
Col. Robert B. Landry was President Harry S. Truman’s air force aide, serving as liaison with the air force for administrative and policy functions. Landry had previously been the executive officer to Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Carl Spaatz and took the position of air force aide in early February 1948. He remained Truman’s aide for the next five years and later earned a general’s rank.
The following is an excerpt from an oral history interview conducted in 1974.11 Speaking of 1948, Landry stated:
I was called one afternoon to come to the Oval Office—the president wanted to see me. We talked about UFO reports and what might be the meaning for all these rather way-out reports of sightings, and the subject in general. The president said he hadn’t given much serious thought to all these reports; but at the same time, he said, if there was any evidence of a strategic threat to the national security, the collection and evaluation of UFO data by Central Intelligence warranted more intense study and attention at the highest government level.
