NICAP fed a fake crash story (1957)
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Contents 8
NICAP fed a fake crash story (1957)
| Date | May 1957 |
|---|---|
| Target | National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) |
| Alleged story | A flying-saucer crash in the Florida Everglades |
| Source of hoax | An Associated Press employee and "former Signal Corps engineer", said to have NSA ties (per the Shellenberger timeline) |
| Account | Donald Keyhoe, Flying Saucers: Top Secret (1960), chapter "The Hoax" (pp. 64–68) |
| 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 | 7 |
In his 1960 book Flying Saucers: Top Secret, the retired Marine Corps major Donald Keyhoe, director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), described how the young organisation was fed a fabricated story of a flying-saucer crash. The book has a chapter titled "The Hoax".[1] According to the anonymous UAP timeline in Michael Shellenberger's 2024 House testimony, which cites pages 64–68 of the book, the story told in May 1957 was of a crash in the Florida Everglades. The source was an Associated Press employee and "former Signal Corps engineer" with ties to the National Security Agency, who admitted faking the story but gave no motive.[7] The book itself could not be read for this article, so these details rest on the timeline's summary.
NICAP in 1957
- The inventor Thomas Townsend Brown founded NICAP on 24 October 1956. Its board of governors included Keyhoe and Rear Admiral Delmer S. Fahrney, the former head of the Navy's guided-missile programme.[2]
- By early January 1957 Brown had proved so financially inept that the board asked him to step down. Fahrney replaced him and, at a press conference on 16 January 1957, said UFOs were under intelligent control but were neither American nor Soviet. He resigned in April 1957 for personal reasons, and Keyhoe became director.[2] A biography based on the work of Keyhoe's colleague Richard Hall dates Keyhoe's appointment to January 1957, so the two sources differ.[4]
- Keyhoe started the monthly newsletter The U.F.O. Investigator. His Naval Academy classmate Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first director of the CIA, joined the board. NICAP had over 5,000 members by 1958 and about 14,000 in the early 1960s. It collected sighting reports, pressed Congress for hearings and argued that the government was covering up UFO evidence.[2]
- Keyhoe, born in 1897, was a Naval Academy graduate and Marine aviator. In the 1920s he had managed Floyd Bennett's tour and accompanied Charles Lindbergh's. His January 1950 True article "Flying Saucers Are Real" made him the best-known advocate of the view that UFOs came from outer space and that the Air Force knew it.[4]
The fake story
- As summarised in the timeline, NICAP was told in May 1957 about a UFO crash in the Everglades. The informant was an Associated Press employee who described himself as a former Signal Corps engineer, and he had connections to the NSA. He later admitted that the story was fake but gave no motive.[7]
- The earlier version of this article said NICAP found the story false "on checking" and that Keyhoe suspected the aim was to embarrass NICAP if it went public. In the timeline's version the source himself admitted the fabrication. Keyhoe's own interpretation could not be checked against the book.[1][7]
- The account is not documented outside Keyhoe's book, and the source's identity has not been confirmed. Researchers at Project 1947 have noted that Keyhoe, who had a remarkable memory, often kept few records. Much of the material behind Flying Saucers: Top Secret was missing from the files he later handed over for copying.[5]
- In the book's chapter list, "The Hoax" is followed by chapters titled "The Captain Ruppelt Record", "The Inquiry Begins", "Frame-up" and "Checkmate". An online listing of the revised edition gives its length as 286 pages.[1][6]
Intelligence interest in civilian groups
- The episode belongs to a wider pattern of claims about intelligence interest in civilian UFO groups. In January 1953 the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel recommended a public "education" campaign to reduce interest in flying saucers. It also recommended that civilian groups be watched "because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking if widespread sightings should occur", naming the Civilian Saucer Investigators of Los Angeles and APRO of Wisconsin.[3]
- A CIA analyst in 1952 had noted that the Air Force was watching a California civilian saucer group because of "its power to touch off mass hysteria and panic". The analyst suggested that intelligence should watch for Soviet attempts to exploit American credulity.[3]
- Hillenkoetter left NICAP's board in 1962. Several people with CIA ties later joined NICAP, but charges that the agency infiltrated it, including claims about board chairman Joseph Bryan III, were never substantiated. Bryan's son, the writer C. D. B. Bryan, said NICAP "simply self-destructed".[2]
- NICAP declined after the 1969 Condon Report, forced Keyhoe to retire in December 1969, and dissolved at the end of 1980. Its case files passed to the Center for UFO Studies.[2]
Assessment
- The story is known only from Keyhoe's account and the timeline's summary of it. The informant is unnamed, and his claimed NSA connection is not documented elsewhere.[1][7]
- The Robertson Panel's recommendation shows that official interest in monitoring civilian UFO groups was real. However, nothing published links this particular hoax to any government agency.[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 →
Further reading
- UFO documents — NSA · nsa.gov · archived copy
- NICAP — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- NICAP archive · nicap.org · archived copy
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
- Michael Shellenberger, written testimony to the House Oversight Committee (13 November 2024), p. 59 · oversight.house.gov
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena”, “Robertson Panel”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
Categories: 1957 | Crashes retrievals | Disinformation hoaxes | Donald keyhoe | National security agency | Nicap | Timeline event | Unidentified anomalous phenomena | Unidentified flying object
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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