House Armed Services Committee UFO hearing (1966)

House Armed Services Committee UFO hearing (1966)

Date	Tuesday, 5 April 1966, 10:35–11:55 a.m.
Body	House Committee on Armed Services, 89th Congress, 2nd Session (printed as document No. 55)
Chairman	L. Mendel Rivers (D-South Carolina)
Witnesses	Air Force Secretary Harold Brown; J. Allen Hynek, scientific consultant; Maj. Hector Quintanilla Jr., Project Blue Book
Prompted by	The March 1966 Michigan sightings and House Republican leader Gerald Ford's call for hearings
Key figures	10,147 reports from 1947 to 1965; 646 unidentified
Outcome	The Air Force-funded University of Colorado study under Edward Condon
Topics	Military encounters (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Government programs (topic)
People	Mendel Rivers, Harold Brown, Hector Quintanilla, J. Allen Hynek, Brad Sparks
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 68
Year	1966 in UFO history
Timeline	1966 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	15

On 5 April 1966 the U.S. House Armed Services Committee, chaired by Representative L. Mendel Rivers of South Carolina, held a short open hearing on unidentified flying objects.^[1][9] It followed a wave of sightings in Michigan and a request from the House Republican leader, Gerald Ford. It led directly to the Air Force-funded University of Colorado study under the physicist Edward Condon.^[1][2][3] It was the first congressional hearing devoted to UFOs, and only witnesses connected with the Air Force's program testified.^[2][15]

Background

In March 1966 several hundred people in Michigan reported strange lights:^[2][7]

• Dexter. On the night of Sunday 20 March, about 50 people near Dexter, northwest of Ann Arbor, described lights and a football-shaped object over a swamp. Among them were the farmer Frank Mannor and his son. Brad Sparks's catalogue of Blue Book cases records a brown, car-sized object with a "scaly" or quilted surface.
• Hillsdale. The next evening, 87 students at Hillsdale College watched an object hover over a swamp near their dormitory. A dean and a civil-defence official also reported seeing it.

J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer who served as the Air Force's scientific consultant, held a news conference in Detroit on 25 March. He said that at least two of the sightings could have been caused by marsh gas.^[2][4] "A dismal swamp is a most unlikely place for a visit from outer space," he said. He stressed that the explanation did not cover the whole UFO phenomenon.^[2] In his memoir Quintanilla dates Mannor's sighting to 17 March, three days earlier than the dates in the Air Force statement and Sparks's catalogue.^[1][7][8]

On 25 March Ford said he would ask the Armed Services and the Science and Astronautics committees to consider "full blown" investigations. He argued that if swamp gas was the answer, the Air Force should have no trouble explaining it to a committee. No congressional leader had made such a call before.^[2][4] A spokesman for the Science and Astronautics Committee said the matter belonged to Armed Services, since the Air Force handled "flying saucers".^[2] Ford's 28 March letter to Rivers, printed in the record, rejected the idea that the reports could be "so easily explained away". He quoted the columnists Roscoe Drummond and Bulkley Griffin, both critical of the Air Force.^[1][12] In a column for his district's weeklies Ford wrote that "the Air Force has been explaining away UFO's for years".^[10] Records of his campaign are held at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.^[10][12]

Preparations

Brown and General McConnell, the Air Force chief, had been appearing before the committee on the Air Force's posture in the last week of March. Rivers asked Brown to be ready to discuss UFOs at the next session, on 5 April.^[8] Quintanilla, the Blue Book chief, described what followed in his memoir:^[8]

• Short notice. His commander, Brig. Gen. Arthur Cruikshank, decided he could not learn the subject in two hours and sent Quintanilla in his place. Quintanilla flew to Andrews on a military T-39 the next morning.
• The position paper. Over a weekend at the Pentagon, lawyers, scientists and information officers revised Brown's position paper "at least a dozen times".
• Advice. Gen. Corbin of the Air Force's legislative liaison office brought Hynek in. He told Quintanilla to keep his temper and answer truthfully. Both men told Corbin they would not make public statements.
• The briefing. On the morning of the hearing Brown questioned the two for twenty-five minutes in his office.

The hearing

The committee met at 10:35 a.m. Rivers opened by saying, "We can't just write them off. There are too many responsible people who are concerned," and noted Ford's stature in Congress.^[1] After a discussion off the record he had the doors opened to the press and public. "Open the doors," he said, and Brown repeated his statement.^[1] Quintanilla remembered Rivers asking whether the session should be executive. Brown said nothing he would say was classified. Quintanilla called the opening of the doors a "political coup" that "pulled the rug from under" advocates of a public hearing.^[8]

Brown's statement, a letter to Rivers, set out the Air Force position:^[1]

• The figures. Of 10,147 reports from 1947 to 1965, the Air Force had identified 9,501. The other 646 lacked an adequate basis for analysis, or suggested an explanation that could not be proven.
• No threat. Eighteen years of investigation had found no threat, no evidence of principles "beyond present-day scientific knowledge", and no evidence of extraterrestrial vehicles.
• The review. An ad hoc committee of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board had just reviewed Project Blue Book. Its recommendations were under study.

The record also printed the Air Force's statement on the Michigan cases. It said that young men had played pranks with flares at Hillsdale, and that a widely published photograph had been taken near Milan, Michigan, on 17 March and showed the rising moon and Venus.^[1]

In questioning, Brown said the Air Force had explained 95 per cent of sightings but was "not sure about the other 5 percent". He knew of no one "of scientific standing or executive standing" who believed in extraterrestrial craft.^[1]

Hynek's statement

When Rivers asked whether he had anything to say, Hynek replied that the press had "treated me rather unkindly". Rivers quipped, "You ought to be chairman of this committee."^[1][8] One later summary attributes the remark to Brown and quotes Hynek as saying "rather unfairly". The printed record gives it to the chairman.^[1][12] Hynek said he had been called "a puppet of the Air Force". He then read a statement "certainly not … dictated by the Air Force":^[1]

• Signal and noise. He described the UFO problem as one of "signal-to-noise ratio". Most reports were misidentifications, but he asked whether there might be "a signal somewhere in the noise".
• Unexplained cases. He had set aside some 20 well-reported cases he could not explain: 10 from scientists and other highly trained people, 5 from military and police observers and 5 from other reliable civilians.
• Earlier advice. He recalled his 1952 warning that "ridicule is not a part of the scientific method". He also recalled his 1953 and 1965 recommendations for a civilian scientific panel.
• The proposal. He proposed that "a civilian panel of physical and social scientists" examine the data "for the express purpose of determining whether a major problem really exists".

He added that he had been "scooped" by Brown, since the Scientific Advisory Board had recommended much the same.^[1][5] Quintanilla wrote that an officer behind him muttered in dismay when Hynek produced his statement. Quintanilla was angry, because Hynek had told Corbin he would not make one, and never fully trusted him again.^[8]

Hynek also raised the puzzle that troubled him. If UFOs were real craft, many more people should see them travelling "from point to point", and radar and astronomers should record more of them.^[1] He told the committee he knew of "no competent scientist" who thought the objects came from outer space, but that the possibility should be kept open.^[1]

Questions

Members' questions ranged widely:^[1]

• Exeter. William Bates of Massachusetts entered a letter from Raymond Fowler, a NICAP investigator, about the September 1965 Exeter, New Hampshire, sighting. Fowler urged open hearings. Hynek said the case was listed as unidentified and that the planned panel should examine it.
• An example. Hynek described a case he had investigated: four people, two of them anthropology students, chased by a hovering object with four red lights and a white light. No one else had reported it.
• Life magazine. Samuel Stratton of New York pressed for an explanation of UFO photographs published in Life. Quintanilla said the owners had not handed over the negatives. Rivers directed Brown to ask Life for them. Quintanilla later wrote that Brown whispered "tell him yes".
• The swamp gas. Hynek said he had spoken to about 32 of the 50 to 60 witnesses. He explained his marsh-gas theory as the spontaneous ignition of gases released by a thaw after a mild winter, while admitting he "couldn't prove it in a court of law".
• Lighter moments. F. Edward Hébert asked whether Hynek had consulted the actor Ray Walston of My Favorite Martian. Robert Stafford joked that the UFOs in his home state of Vermont might simply be badly navigated.

The session adjourned at 11:55 a.m. The committee resumed in executive session that afternoon on unrelated business.^[1]

Radar cases

Officials said during the hearing, and in related statements, that none of the radar cases on file remained unexplained:^[1]

• Quintanilla's answers. Asked by Donald Clancy whether any unexplained cases had been seen on radar, he said no, and that about 1.5 per cent of all reports involved radar. Pressed by Richard Schweiker, he repeated: "We have no radar cases which are unexplained."
• Exeter. Quintanilla said there was no radar information on the Exeter sighting and that no jets had been scrambled. Brown added that Pease AFB was a bomber base, not a fighter base.
• The January letter. An Air Force letter to Rivers of 18 January 1966, printed in the record, said that all objects tracked on radar had been identified as birds, weather or ground reflections.

Researchers have since contrasted this with Blue Book's own files, which list a number of radar and radar-visual cases as "unidentified". Brad Sparks's catalogue of Blue Book unknowns includes several.^[5][7] Among them are the radar-visual cases at RAF Bentwaters and Lakenheath in August 1956 and the RB-47 case of July 1957.^[7] Sparks also notes that James McDonald argued from 1966 that the true number of unknowns was perhaps ten times the official figure.^[7]

The "Estimate of the Situation"

Edward Ruppelt wrote in 1956 that Project Sign had produced a top-secret "Estimate of the Situation" concluding that UFOs were interplanetary. No copy has ever been produced.^[6] A constituent's letter in the hearing record asserted that the document existed.^[1] The denial came in the Air Force's reply of 18 January 1966 to Rivers, signed by Col. Dwight Covell of the Congressional Inquiry Division and printed in the record: "There has never been a top-secret document, entitled 'Estimate of the Situation,' which concluded that UFO's are interplanetary in nature."^[1] The claim is often attributed to Rivers himself as a statement at a hearing on 18 January 1966. The printed record shows it was the Air Force's letter to him.^[1][6]

The O'Brien committee

The Scientific Advisory Board review that Brown cited had been requested in September 1965 and met in February 1966. Hynek had prompted it.^[1][5] Its members were Brian O'Brien (chairman), Launor Carter, Jesse Orlansky, Richard Porter, Carl Sagan and Willis Ware.^[1] Its findings:^[1][5]

• No threat. UFOs posed no threat. The program was well organized, but its resources were "only one officer, a sergeant, and secretary".
• Weak identifications. Some cases listed as identified rested on evidence "too meager or too indefinite".
• University teams. It recommended contracts with a few universities to study about 100 sightings a year in depth, at about 10 man-days each.
• Openness. It recommended publishing the reports in full and dropping any wording that might suggest information was being withheld.

Quintanilla called the committee "a milestone in the final termination of the Project".^[8]

Outcome

Shortly after the hearing the Air Force announced it was looking for universities to take on a UFO study. Several declined, including Harvard, Berkeley and MIT, before Condon agreed in the summer of 1966.^[5] Later in 1966 the Air Force Office of Scientific Research funded the independent study at the University of Colorado, directed by Condon.^[3][5] Its report, released in 1969, concluded that further study was unlikely to add to scientific knowledge.^[3][5] In October 1969 Brig. Gen. C. H. Bolender recommended ending the project. His memo noted that reports bearing on national security went through other channels "and are not part of the Blue Book system". The Air Force closed Project Blue Book that December.^[3]

A second session, a "Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects" before the House Science and Astronautics Committee, followed on 29 July 1968. Six scientists testified, including Hynek, McDonald and Sagan.^[12][15] Quintanilla later wrote an unpublished memoir, UFOs: An Air Force Dilemma (dated 1974), defending Blue Book's work. He called Ford's push "pure politics" and the hearing "totally unnecessary".^[3][8]

Sources

The text above draws on the printed hearing on GovInfo. A second copy of the transcript is on the Internet Archive, but it offered no readable text when checked.^[1][11] Three other listed sources could not be read when this article was prepared: a University of Michigan Bentley Library article on the "swamp gas" episode, an LBJ Library file on the hearing, and Hynek's later book The UFO Experience, which has no viewable copy on the Internet Archive.^[4][13][14]

People and topics

• Project Blue Book — The Air Force's public UFO investigation from 1952 until its closure in December 1969.
• House Armed Services Committee — The House committee that held a UFO hearing in 1966.
• Mendel Rivers — Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee during the 1966 UFO hearing.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
• U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
• Harold Brown — Air Force Secretary who testified at the 1966 House UFO hearing.
• Hector Quintanilla — Last head of Project Blue Book (1963–69).
• J. Allen Hynek — Astronomer and Air Force UFO consultant from 1948 to 1969 who later founded the Center for UFO Studies.
• Brad Sparks — UFO analyst known for his catalogue of Blue Book unknowns and work on the CIA lawsuit.
• Condon Report — Condon Report

On the Timeline

• Gerald Ford's call for UFO hearings (3 April 1966) — Rep. Gerald Ford is told an upcoming UAP study won't be tied to the Air Force.
• FBI denials of UFO interest (21 July 1966) — The FBI tells citizens UAP have never been its concern, contradicting its own files.

See every 1966 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Condon Committee”, “Project Sign”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.