Hynek on the Robertson Panel's legacy

Hynek on the Robertson Panel's legacy

Subject	J. Allen Hynek's later view of the 1953 CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel
Panel met	14–17 January 1953, chaired by H. P. Robertson
Hynek's role	Air Force scientific consultant; presented to the panel but was not a full member
His verdict	The panel "made the subject of UFOs scientifically unrespectable" for nearly 20 years
Where stated	The Hynek UFO Report (1977) and later interviews, some used in James Fox's UFOs: I Know What I Saw
Date	1979
Topics	Government programs (topic), Congress & law (topic), Disinformation & hoaxes (topic)
People	J. Allen Hynek
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 87
Year	1979 in UFO history
Timeline	1979 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	6

The astronomer J. Allen Hynek attended the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel in January 1953 as the Air Force's scientific consultant. In later years he said that the panel's recommendations effectively set an unwritten rule: the Air Force was to play the UFO subject down and explain away cases wherever possible.^[1][2] He wrote that the panel had "made the subject of UFOs scientifically unrespectable". In his view, for nearly twenty years afterwards not enough attention was paid to gather even the data needed to decide what UFOs were.^[1][4]

The panel

The panel grew out of the wave of 1952 sightings, especially the radar and visual reports over Washington, D.C., in July.^[1][2] CIA analysts worried about two things, set out in a memo to the Director of Central Intelligence in September 1952:^[1]

• Psychological warfare. The public's credulity might be exploited by an enemy.
• Overloaded defences. A flood of reports might hide a real attack: "how will we, on an instant basis, distinguish hardware from phantom?"

The Intelligence Advisory Committee agreed on 4 December 1952 to enlist scientists to review the evidence.^[1]

The panel, chaired by the Caltech physicist H. P. Robertson, met from 14 January 1953. Its members included Luis Alvarez, Samuel Goudsmit, Thornton Page and Lloyd Berkner, with the CIA's Frederick Durant as secretary. Hynek presented to it but was not a full member.^[1][2] Page later said Robertson told the members at a private first session that their job was "to reduce public concern, and show that UFO reports could be explained by conventional reasoning".^[1]

Over four days and about 12 hours the panel looked at 23 of the Air Force's 2,331 cases, roughly 1 per cent:^[1]

• The films. It watched the Mariana and Tremonton films, and rejected a Navy photo laboratory's 1,000-hour analysis that the objects were "self-luminous".
• Seagulls. It watched footage of seagulls, suspecting the Tremonton objects were birds.
• Hynek. On the second day Hynek discussed the Battelle Memorial Institute's statistical study.
• Fournet. Maj. Dewey Fournet argued that elimination left an extraterrestrial explanation for some cases. The panel would not accept his examples, calling them raw, unevaluated reports.

Its recommendations

The panel concluded unanimously that UFO reports showed no direct threat to national security and no evidence of extraterrestrial visitors.^[1] It warned of indirect dangers: misidentified enemy aircraft, emergency channels "clogged" by false reports, and public susceptibility to "mass hysteria" and enemy propaganda.^[1] It recommended:^[1][2]

• Removing the mystery. Security agencies should strip UFOs of "the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired".
• A "debunking" campaign. Public education should use television, films and popular articles, possibly including Walt Disney Productions, built around puzzling cases that had later been explained. "As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the 'secret' is known."
• Training. Personnel should be taught to recognize and reject false reports quickly.
• Watching civilian groups. Groups such as the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization "should be watched" for their potential influence on mass thinking.

Hynek's view

Hynek had begun as a skeptic. In 1948 he called the subject "utterly ridiculous".^[4] By the early 1960s his change of mind was "an open secret", but he spoke openly only after Blue Book closed.^[4] In The Hynek UFO Report (1977), which drew on 12,000 sightings and 140,000 pages of Blue Book files, and in interviews, he argued that the panel's attitude shaped how Project Blue Book worked for the rest of its existence.^[1][4][5] His points:^[4]

• Public relations. After Edward Ruppelt left, he said, Blue Book was "little more than a public relations exercise", with little or no scientific research.
• An unyielding Air Force. In a 1985 interview he cited "the completely negative and unyielding attitude of the Air Force. They wouldn't give UFOs the chance of existing, even if they were flying up and down the street in broad daylight."
• The witnesses. The other reason for his change was "the caliber of the witnesses", including military pilots.
• "Totally inadequate". In 1968 he told the Foreign Technology Division that Blue Book's efforts were "totally inadequate". One wag had called it the "Society for the Explanation of the Uninvestigated".

Archive interviews with Hynek setting out these views appear in James Fox's documentary UFOs: I Know What I Saw.^[3][6] The YouTube copies of the film list it under that title, and a link is given to the passage at about 22:52. The video itself could not be transcribed for this article, so Hynek's wording there is not quoted.^[3][6]

The policy in practice

Many researchers conclude that the panel was recommending control of public opinion through official propaganda and surveillance, and that this shaped Air Force policy for decades.^[2] Measures that followed:^[1][2]

• Air Force Regulation 200-2. Issued in 1953, it let base officers discuss UFO cases publicly only if solved. Unsolved cases were classified.
• The 4602nd. Investigations moved to the 4602nd Air Intelligence Service Squadron, which took the important cases and left Blue Book the trivial ones.
• Reporting rules. JANAP 146 (December 1953) and a 1954 revision of AFR 200-2 penalized unauthorized release of UFO information.
• The CIA. It abandoned its planned National Security Council directive on UFOs and forbade any mention of its sponsorship of the panel.

The historian Michael Swords judged that the panel's report sharply reduced concern about UFOs across the military and intelligence communities.^[1] When Ruppelt returned from a temporary posting in 1953, he found his staff cut from more than ten to two.^[2]

Context

Ruppelt first revealed the panel's existence, without names, in his 1956 book. In 1958 the Air Force released three summary paragraphs and the members' names at the request of the civilian group NICAP.^[1] The full report was not made public until 1966, when a nearly complete version was published in the Saturday Review.^[1] By the late 1970s Hynek had become the most prominent scientific advocate of serious UFO research. He founded the Center for UFO Studies in 1973 and died in 1986.^[4] Critics of the panel argue that its review was perfunctory and its conclusions largely fixed in advance by the CIA's earlier review.^[1]

People and topics

• J. Allen Hynek — Astronomer and Air Force UFO consultant from 1948 to 1969 who later founded the Center for UFO Studies.
• Robertson Panel — Robertson Panel
• U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• Central Intelligence Agency — The U.S. foreign intelligence agency, which has followed UFO reports since the 1940s.
• Project Blue Book — The Air Force's public UFO investigation from 1952 until its closure in December 1969.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
• Center for UFO Studies — The research center founded by J. Allen Hynek in 1973.

On the Timeline

• Samuel Stratton and the SAC base overflights (20 December 1978) — Rep. Samuel Stratton raises concerns over unknown aircraft flying over Strategic Air Command bases.
• Vallée's 1979 conclusions on government involvement (1979) — Vallée says he is convinced the government still monitors UAP groups and stages false sightings.

See every 1979 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

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