Civilian Saucer Investigation

Civilian Saucer Investigation

Type	Organization
On the Timeline	2 events, 1953–1970

Civilian Saucer Investigation (CSI, often called CSI-LA) was a civilian UFO research group based in Los Angeles from late 1951 to 1954. It was one of the first such groups in the United States, and most of its founders were engineers and technical writers at North American Aviation.^[1][2] National magazine coverage in 1952 brought it reports from around the world, and it shared many of them with the Air Force's Project Blue Book.^[2][4] In 1953 the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel nevertheless suggested that it be watched.^[2] Overwhelmed by paperwork, it closed in 1954, and its files ended up with NICAP and later the Center for UFO Studies.^[2] It is not to be confused with Civilian Saucer Intelligence of New York or Civilian Saucer Investigation of New Zealand, unrelated groups with similar names.^[2]

Founding

According to the Wikipedia account, the group grew out of a sighting on 29 May 1951. Three North American Aviation technical writers, Edward J. Sullivan, Werner Eicher and Victor Black, reported glowing, meteor-like objects making right-angle turns, and they joined the rocket scientist Walther Riedel to form the group.^[1] The researcher Jan L. Aldrich of the Sign Historical Group describes the founding a little differently. He says that in late 1951 several scientists, aeronautical engineers and interested people set up a UFO study group in California, with Sullivan as its "spark plug" and Riedel as another prominent member.^[2]

• Edward J. Sullivan. A technical writer for North American Aviation, the builders of the Sabre jet. Time reported in March 1952 that Sullivan had himself seen 30 luminous, zigzagging objects over Los Angeles and apparently believed saucers were spacecraft from another planet.^[3]
• Walther Riedel. A German rocket engineer who had been chief designer at the Peenemünde V-2 centre and came to the United States under Operation Paperclip. He worked as a project engineer in North American's aerophysics department. Time called him the group's "most impressive believer". He had seen nothing himself but had kept records of worldwide sightings for years.^[2][3][4]
• Werner Eicher. The group's translator for foreign reports. Aldrich describes him as an employee of Convair's missile division in Pomona, California. The Wikipedia account calls him a North American technical writer.^[1][2]
• Others. The writer Gerald Heard, author of Is Another World Watching?, was a member and published the group's address.^[2]

Riedel argued that saucers could not be terrestrial. In his view their skin temperatures would be too high for any known material, their manoeuvres needed a pilot but would kill a human one, and their propulsion left no trails at altitude. He concluded that they came from a planet with more advanced technology.^[3] Time noted the skeptics' replies: no craft had crashed and been found, there were no firm radar reports, and conspicuous objects over Los Angeles were seen by only a handful of people.^[3]

Meeting with the Air Force

On 2 April 1952, at the Mayfair Hotel in Los Angeles, Colonel S. H. Kirkland and Lieutenant Edward Ruppelt of the Air Technical Intelligence Center briefed the group, with members of the media invited. Kirkland told members that the Air Force did not know what the objects were and that about 15 per cent of reports defied explanation. Ruppelt said the project was trying not to assume that every report was a balloon or every witness crazy, and that it planned to use diffraction gratings to study the light of sightings.^[2][5] Blue Book's status report of 30 April 1952 described the group as mostly qualified engineers working on missiles at North American's aerophysics laboratory, though not officially linked to the company. It said liaison had been set up so the Air Force would hear of any outstanding reports.^[6]

In his 1956 book Ruppelt was less generous. He called the group a "well-meaning but Don Quixote-type" body that was bound to fail, and said the highlight of the evening was reading an advance copy of Life's forthcoming article on UFOs.^[2]

Activities

Time featured the group in March 1952, and Life mentioned it briefly in its influential April 1952 article "Have We Visitors From Space?". True and Reader's Digest also wrote about it.^[1][2][3] The publicity brought huge amounts of mail and hundreds of reports from countries ranging from Canada and Britain to Australia, New Zealand and Peru.^[2]

• Bulletin. The group published four issues of its CSI Quarterly Bulletin, from September 1952 to winter 1954. The first issue carried foreign reports translated by Eicher and a summary of the group's study by Richard Williams, an editor at the Los Angeles Mirror.^[1][2]
• Evaluation. A panel of thirteen scientists, engineers and technical writers judged 10 to 15 per cent of reports worth further study. Many of these described fast, disc-shaped objects that sometimes wobbled or glowed.^[2]
• Investigations. A CIA memorandum of 9 February 1953 recorded that, according to Riedel, the group had received about 1,570 letters. It had discarded 75 per cent at once and most of the rest after investigation, leaving about 25 sightings with no known explanation, most of which were sent to Wright Field. The CIA writer was impressed that CSI checked whether reports were physically possible and privately investigated witnesses' reliability. Riedel also described plans for a deliberate "hoax" over Los Angeles to test how the public reported a visible aerial phenomenon.^[4]
• The Air Force. Aldrich writes that CSI shared many reports with ATIC. The official case files contain none of them, but a separate correspondence file holding some of them was found.^[2]

Victor Black's attack

Soon after the first bulletin, Victor Black, a North American technical writer, attacked the group in The American Mercury in October 1952 under the title "The Flying Saucer Hoax".^[1][2] According to the Wikipedia account, Black said that he and his friends had made up the original sighting as a joke.^[1] Aldrich describes the article as accusing Sullivan of running CSI as a cult and a get-rich-quick scheme, although the treasury never exceeded a few hundred dollars and officers paid many costs themselves. It also attacked Riedel as an "ex-Nazi" and made remarks about Lincoln LaPaz, head of the University of New Mexico's Institute of Meteoritics, who had no known connection with the group. After threats of legal action, the magazine published a retraction in January 1953.^[2]

The earlier version of this article said the group "soon dissolved" after Black's article. According to Aldrich, CSI continued for more than a year and closed in 1954 because of the pressure of correspondence and administration.^[2]

The Robertson Panel and the CIA

At the Robertson Panel in January 1953, the group was discussed under the name "Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators". The panel thought such groups should be watched because of their potential influence on mass thinking, and their "possible use ... for subversive purposes" kept in mind.^[2] Frederick Durant, who kept the panel's minutes, later recalled that Ruppelt had raised George Adamski and the UFO groups as generators of reports. Aldrich finds CSI's inclusion strange, since it was sending its investigations to the Air Force.^[2] The CIA's Contact Division interviewed Riedel in February 1953. The resulting memo also noted that "NAA", which it glossed as the National Aeronautical Association, had politely suggested that Riedel withdraw from official membership of CSI.^[2][4] Aldrich observes that Ruppelt, the panel and the CIA all got the group's name wrong.^[2]

End and legacy

Like many part-time groups, CSI found that correspondence, newsletters and administration consumed its time. By 1954 it was looking for someone else to take over its evaluation work, and it ceased operations that year after four newsletters.^[2] Its files, holding almost 1,000 first-hand sighting reports, passed through several hands to NICAP in Washington. When CUFOS received NICAP's files, most of the CSI reports were intact, though the case investigations and panel evaluations apparently did not survive.^[1][2]

The New York group Civilian Saucer Intelligence, whose members were sparing with praise, called CSI-LA the best of the UFO organisations. Many of its reports were used in Richard Hall's The UFO Evidence.^[2] Aldrich also notes that employees at other aviation companies, including Douglas, Republic, Northrop and Lockheed, had similar informal interest in UFOs in this period.^[2]

On the UAP Timeline

• CIA memo on Civilian Saucer Investigation (9 February 1953) — A CIA officer admits monitoring a public UAP meeting in Los Angeles.
• Project Skylite (5 April 1970) — McDonnell Douglas papers describe Project Skylite, a failed effort to copy UAP behavior.

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Civilian Saucer Investigation”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.