Rumsfeld's "no need to know" remark

Rumsfeld's "no need to know" remark

Date	13 April 1975
Topics	Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Government programs (topic), Congress & law (topic)
People	J. Allen Hynek, Donald Rumsfeld, Jacques Vallée, Gerald Ford
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 80
Year	1975 in UFO history
Timeline	1975 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	5

Rumsfeld's "no need to know" remark is an exchange recorded in the journals of Jacques Vallée under the date 13 April 1975. The astronomer J. Allen Hynek had gone to see Donald Rumsfeld at the White House. He described the work of his Center for UFO Studies and argued that he therefore needed to know whether a secret UFO study existed somewhere. Rumsfeld "replied abruptly: 'You do NOT have a need to know.'"^[1] Hynek was left wondering whether Rumsfeld was simply reacting as a bureaucrat or really knew something.^[1] The anecdote appears in volume two of Vallée's Forbidden Science (p. 293). It is one of a long run of journal entries in which Vallée and his colleagues chased hints of a hidden government UFO project, and Michael Shellenberger included it in his 2024 timeline for Congress.^[1][5]

The exchange

• The journal entry. Vallée wrote that Hynek ("Allen") had gone to see Rumsfeld at the White House.^[1]
  • Hynek described the work of "the Center", the Center for UFO Studies he had founded in 1973 in Evanston, Illinois.^[1][3]
  • He argued that he therefore had a need to know whether there was a secret study somewhere.^[1]
  • Rumsfeld answered abruptly that Hynek did "NOT" have a need to know.^[1]
• Hynek's uncertainty. Afterwards, Vallée wrote, Hynek wondered "if the man was reacting purely as a bureaucrat, or if he really knew something".^[1]
• Shellenberger's version. Shellenberger's timeline summarises the episode as Rumsfeld telling Hynek at the White House that he did "not" have a need to know whether there was a secret UFO study somewhere after Project Blue Book. It cites the same blog compilation of Vallée's journals.^[5]
• Rumsfeld's post. The earlier version of this article said Rumsfeld was then White House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford. The sources read here place the meeting "at the White House" but do not state Rumsfeld's job at the time.^[1][5] One of them notes that he served as Secretary of Defense under Ford from 1975 to 1977.^[2]

Rumsfeld and the 1968 symposium

• Committee member. Seven years earlier, Rumsfeld had been a Republican congressman from Illinois. He sat on the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, which held a "Symposium on Unidentified Flying Objects" on 29 July 1968.^[2]
  • The symposium was held in Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building. It was chaired by Representative J. Edward Roush of Indiana, under committee chairman George P. Miller.^[2]
  • Six scientists spoke in person, including Hynek, the atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald and Carl Sagan, then a Cornell associate professor.^[2]
  • Six more, including the Harvard astronomer Donald Menzel and the physicist Stanton Friedman, submitted papers.^[2]
• Roush's opening. Roush opened by saying the committee approached UFOs "as purely a scientific problem" and took "no stand on these matters".^[2]
• Rumsfeld's role. The committee roster shows Rumsfeld as a member.^[2] The earlier version of this article said he was "a committee member at the session but not a witness or chair". The sources read here confirm that he was on the committee and was not a witness or chair, but they do not show whether he attended that day.^[2]
• Later career. Rumsfeld later served twice as Secretary of Defense, under Ford from 1975 to 1977 and under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006.^[2]
• After the symposium. The 1968 symposium produced no congressional investigation. The Condon Report of January 1969 argued against further study, and Project Blue Book closed in December 1969.^[2] See Condon Report.

Hynek in 1975

• From consultant to critic. Hynek had been the Air Force's scientific consultant on UFOs from Project Sign in 1948 through Project Blue Book.^[2][3]
  • When first hired he was sceptical, suspecting that reports came from unreliable witnesses or mistaken observers.^[3]
  • By 1968 he was criticising the Air Force's investigation as inadequate.^[2][3]
• CUFOS. He founded the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston in 1973 to promote scientific analysis of UFO cases. Its archives include files from civilian groups such as NICAP.^[3]
• Writing with Vallée. In 1975 Hynek and Vallée published The Edge of Reality together.^[3] In November 1978 Hynek presented a statement to the United Nations General Assembly's Special Political Committee on behalf of himself, Vallée and Claude Poher, seeking a central UN authority on UFOs.^[3]

The search for a secret project

• Vallée's diaries. The blogger who compiled the Rumsfeld entry gathered twenty-one passages from volumes two and three of Forbidden Science, spanning 1972 to 1989. They trace how Vallée's thinking changed on whether a secret U.S. government UFO research group existed.^[1] Among them:
  • October 1972: Howell McConnell asked Vallée whether he had heard of a group at Wright-Patterson said to analyse UFO material secretly for the Air Force.^[1]
  • October–November 1973: Hal Puthoff told Vallée there was such a project, which sometimes asked his psychics for remote viewing of suspected UFO bases. He said a CIA group monitoring the field had changed leadership after the recent wave.^[1]
  • 11 February 1974: Vallée met Kit Green. The compiler suggests Green was the biologist Puthoff had described as the group's new leader. Green said he had counterparts throughout the executive branch who worked mostly "out of personal interest", and agreed there must be a secret effort somewhere, possibly in private industry.^[1] See Vallée meets Kit Green (1974).
  • June 1974: Puthoff passed on word of a "group of 12" highly placed officials planning to back UFO research. Vallée then met one supposed member and dismissed the group as "space cadets".^[1]
  • 1978: A caller from McDonnell-Douglas Astronautics told Vallée of a well-funded secret project with CIA monitoring. Vallée later wrote that the company was continuing a quiet study with John Schuessler, apparently looking for exotic alloys.^[1] See McDonnell-Douglas caller to Vallée (1978).
  • 21 May 1980: Vallée told Puthoff he no longer believed the government had an ongoing UFO project, and Puthoff had reached similar conclusions.^[1]
  • 1985: After a meeting in Toulouse, Vallée wrote that Richard Niemtzow had convinced him there was a secret project within the U.S. government. A few weeks later he noted that John B. Alexander's group had concluded the project must be "somewhere else!"^[1]
  • 23 March 1986: Asked whether other groups were already studying UFOs, a man Vallée identifies as McMann, "number two at the CIA", said no.^[1]
• Vallée's 1989 conclusion. On 17 September 1989 Vallée wrote that since Arthur Lundahl knew of no black project, Kit Green had found nothing, and Admiral Houser and General Tommy Johnson denied ever being briefed on a UFO threat, he had "no evidence, not even the hint that a black project is active".^[1]
  • The same day he wrote that there was evidence of "a large disinformation campaign". Yet when he looked behind it he could "find no trace" of what it was meant to hide.^[1]
  • See Vallée on the disinformation campaign (1989).

Assessment

• One source. The anecdote rests on a single entry in Vallée's journal, reporting what Hynek told him. None of the sources read here records Rumsfeld's own account of the meeting.^[1][5]
• Two readings. Hynek himself saw two possibilities: that Rumsfeld was reacting "purely as a bureaucrat", or that he "really knew something".^[1] The earlier version of this article added that "no need to know" might simply be a polite way of declining a subject Rumsfeld knew or cared little about. That is an interpretation, not something the sources state.
• Wider pattern. The compiler of the journal extracts notes that many present-day researchers' belief in a hidden program rests largely on what figures like Vallée thought decades ago. Vallée's own entries swing between conviction and doubt, ending in 1989 with no evidence of an active black project.^[1]
• In Shellenberger's timeline. Shellenberger lists the remark among the episodes in his 2024 testimony on possible government concealment of UFO information.^[5]

People and topics

• J. Allen Hynek — Astronomer and Air Force UFO consultant from 1948 to 1969 who later founded the Center for UFO Studies.
• Donald Rumsfeld — White House chief of staff and Secretary of Defense who reportedly told Hynek he had no need to know.
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• Jacques Vallée — Computer scientist and astronomer, author of the Forbidden Science journals and a central figure in UFO research.
• Gerald Ford — U.S. congressman and later president who called for UFO hearings in 1966.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.

On the Timeline

• Transfer of the Blue Book files (1975) (April 1975) — Blue Book files are withdrawn from public access; some papers are allegedly destroyed or redacted.
• CIA Domestic Collection Division memo (1976) (26 April 1976) — A CIA teletype says agency staff monitor UAP unofficially.

See every 1975 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “J. Allen Hynek”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.