NICAP fed a fake crash story (1957)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 7
| Date | May 1957 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Disinformation & hoaxes (topic) |
| People | Donald Keyhoe |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 59 |
| Year | 1957 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1957 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 6 |
In his 1960 book Flying Saucers: Top Secret, retired Marine Maj. Donald Keyhoe, director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), described how the group was fed a detailed but fabricated story of a flying-saucer crash, apparently in the hope that it would publish the story and be discredited. The testimony dates the episode to 1957 and says the source had ties to the National Security Agency.[1][2]
NICAP
NICAP was founded on 24 October 1956 by inventor Thomas Townsend Brown, who was asked to step down early in 1957. Delmer Fahrney briefly replaced him, and in April 1957 Keyhoe became director. NICAP grew to about 5,000 members by 1958 and nearly 14,000 in the early 1960s, collecting sighting reports, lobbying Congress for hearings and arguing that the Air Force was covering up the truth.[2]
The fake story
According to Keyhoe, the informant offered convincing details of a crash, but on checking NICAP found the story was false. Keyhoe suggested the source had connections in the intelligence world and that the aim was to embarrass NICAP if it went public. The account is not documented outside Keyhoe's book, and the source's identity has not been confirmed.[1]
Intelligence and NICAP
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The episode belongs to a wider pattern of claims about intelligence interest in civilian UFO groups. The CIA's Robertson Panel had recommended in 1953 that such groups be monitored. Former CIA director Roscoe Hillenkoetter sat on NICAP's board until 1962, and other people with CIA ties later joined; charges that the agency infiltrated NICAP have not been substantiated. NICAP declined after the 1969 Condon Report and was dissolved in 1980, its files passing to the Center for UFO Studies.[2][3]
People and topics
- NICAP — The leading U.S. civilian UFO group of the 1950s and 1960s.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- National Security Agency — The U.S. signals intelligence agency, which holds UFO-related intercepts.
- Donald Keyhoe — Retired Marine officer, author and director of NICAP who campaigned against UFO secrecy.
- 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.
- Robertson Panel — Robertson Panel
- Central Intelligence Agency — The U.S. foreign intelligence agency, which has followed UFO reports since the 1940s.
On the Timeline
- Joshua Goldberg and Air Force gravity research (Late 1956) — Wright-Patterson's labs hire physicist Joshua Goldberg to manage relativity and gravity contracts.
- Mach 3 radar target alert (1957) (24 September 1957) — The Air Force intelligence chief warns of a radar target crossing the U.S. at Mach 3.
See every 1957 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- Donald E. Keyhoe, *Flying Saucers: Top Secret* (1960), Google Books · books.google.com · archived copy
- National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Robertson Panel — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Donald Keyhoe biography — Patrick Gross · ufology.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- Keyhoe and NICAP's early years — Project 1947 · mail.project1947.com · archived copy
- books.google.com · books.google.com · archived copy
Further reading
- UFO documents — NSA · nsa.gov · archived copy
- NICAP — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- NICAP archive · nicap.org · archived copy
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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