McClellan subcommittee persuaded against hearings (1958)

McClellan subcommittee persuaded against hearings (1958)

Date	Meeting 31 January 1958; follow-up memoranda February 1958
Committee	Investigators for Senator John L. McClellan's subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Government Operations
Pressure from	Maj. Donald Keyhoe (USMC, ret.), director of NICAP
Air Force offices	Legislative Liaison (SAFLL), Information Services (SAFIS), Research and Development, Intelligence (AFCIN)
Outcome	No public hearings; the subcommittee declined to issue the clearing statement the Air Force wanted
Same year	Closed briefings for Rep. John E. Henderson (June) and John McCormack's subcommittee (August)
First public hearing	House Armed Services Committee, April 1966
Topics	Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Government programs (topic), Congress & law (topic)
People	John McClellan
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 61
Year	1958 in UFO history
Timeline	1958 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	10

In early 1958 the U.S. Air Force persuaded investigators for Senator John McClellan's Senate subcommittee on government operations that it was hiding nothing about UFOs, and the subcommittee decided against public hearings.^[1][5] The inquiry had been prompted by Donald Keyhoe of NICAP. A week before, on live television, he had claimed that a congressional committee was evaluating evidence that UFOs were "machines under intelligent control".^[1][9] Internal Air Force memoranda show the service then tried, without success, to get the subcommittee to certify publicly that it was handling UFO reports properly. The same year it gave private briefings to other members of Congress. The first public congressional hearing on UFOs did not come until 1966.^[1][2][7]

Background

The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) was founded in October 1956. Its board included retired Marine Major Donald Keyhoe, who became director in 1957.^[3][9] By 1958 it had over 5,000 members. Throughout its existence it argued that there was an organised government cover-up of UFO evidence and pushed for congressional hearings, with "occasional success".^[3] Paul McCarthy's history of the period calls NICAP under Keyhoe "the most persevering force" behind roughly ten years of efforts to get Congress to force the Air Force out of what McCarthy calls its "unconcerned posture".^[2]

On 22 January 1958 Keyhoe appeared on the live CBS programme Armstrong Circle Theatre.^[9]

• The script. His prepared text had been cut in negotiations with the producers and the Air Force.
• The broadcast. Departing from it on air, he began: "For the last six months, we have been working with a Congressional committee investigating official secrecy". He was silenced on air, as he later wrote.
• The claim. He charged that a congressional committee was evaluating evidence that "will absolutely prove that the UFOs are machines under intelligent control".^[9]

The meeting of 31 January 1958

A memorandum of 3 February 1958 from Colonel Glen W. Clark, chief of the Public Information Division in the Air Force's Office of Information Services, describes the meeting. It records that Keyhoe had been urging members of the McClellan subcommittee to hold open hearings on whether UFOs existed.^[1][5]

• Time and place. The subcommittee's investigators contacted Air Force Legislative Liaison, and a meeting was held at 10 a.m. on 31 January 1958 in the office of an official named Horner.
• Who attended. The memo lists William Weitzen, deputy for research and development operations, and officers from the research, legislative liaison, intelligence and information offices, among them Majors Joseph Boland, James Byrne and Lawrence Tacker. The two committee investigators were Donald O'Donnell and Jack Healey, both annotated "FBI".^[1][5]
• The question. The investigators asked whether the Air Force wanted hearings. Weitzen said he did not see the need but would co-operate "in every way possible" if the committee thought them necessary.
• Invitation. The investigators were invited to visit the Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson for background.
• Publicity. Tacker said his office was handling UFO publicity at the request of Air Intelligence and would co-operate with any hearings.^[1]

The statement the Air Force wanted

A second memo, addressed to the Director of Information Services, reported the result:^[1][5]

• The investigators convinced. The investigators had held informal talks with the Air Force on 31 January about the "charge that the Air Force was withholding" UFO information. The writer said: "I am sure we convinced them that this was not the case, as they have since indicated there is no need for hearings".
• The request. The Air Force therefore wanted the subcommittee to issue a statement certifying that its preliminary investigation had shown the Air Force was properly investigating UFOs and "not withholding information... from the public". It asked Legislative Liaison to pursue this.^[1]

The answer, in a reply explaining a delay due to "considerable exploratory work" with the committee and its staff, was no.^[1]

• No statement. The committee felt "it is not worthwhile to invest further time and money in this area", and noted that the Air Force was conducting its own investigation. Even so, it "will not make a release to this effect at this time".
• Keeping options open. Congressional committees, the writer observed, "are not prone to commit themselves" in this way. If the situation changed later, they would not want to be "shackled by a press release indicating that they had no further interest in the matter".^[1][5]

The UFO Scans summary names Major General Arno H. Luehman, the Air Force's Director of Information Services, among the people in the file.^[5] The earlier version of this article said an Air Force general involved in liaison with Congress wrote the reply on 28 February 1958. That date could not be read in the scanned copy. It also said a NICAP officer later recounted that a subcommittee investigator had questioned Keyhoe about a document the Air Force later acknowledged. The CIA Reading Room copies of related letters, including one to Keyhoe and a news item headed "Congress is being pressed for flying saucer probe", returned only the reading room's home page when checked.^[4][8][10]

Other briefings in 1958

The Air Force followed the same approach with other members of Congress that year.

• Henderson, June. On 20 June 1958 Majors Boland and Tacker, with technical help from A. F. Arcier and Major Byrne, briefed Representative John E. Henderson and colleagues in the Capitol. The questions followed the publication of Edward Ruppelt's book on UFOs. According to the record of the meeting, the audience agreed it would be unwise to give the subject "undue publicity, particularly in an open or closed formal Congressional hearing".^[7]
• McCormack's subcommittee, August. On 8 August 1958 Arcier and Captain George Gregory of the Air Technical Intelligence Center briefed the Subcommittee on Atmospheric Phenomena of the House Select Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration, chaired by John McCormack. They said "unknowns" had been cut to about 3 percent, that UFOs posed no threat and that the Air Force had never suppressed evidence. They recommended de-emphasising the programme to strip it of its "air of mystery". Members reportedly said no formal hearings were needed.^[6]

McCarthy describes the McCormack sessions as "closed hearings".^[2]

Later hearings

Several efforts in the early 1960s, notably by Representative Joseph Karth of the House Science and Astronautics Committee, came to nothing.^[2]

• April 1966. The only public hearing came before Mendel Rivers's House Armed Services Committee in April 1966. McCarthy judges it unproductive because "only the Air Force position was heard".
• July 1968. On 29 July 1968 the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, at the urging of Representative J. Edward Roush, held a "Symposium on UFOs", deliberately called that rather than a hearing. The speakers were James McDonald, J. Allen Hynek, Robert Hall, Robert Baker, James Harder and Carl Sagan.^[2]

The earlier version of this article cited a 1962 Air Force paper which said congressional UFO hearings had been "averted" in 1958, 1960 and 1961 by privately briefing key members and staff. It linked this approach to the 1953 Robertson Panel's advice to reduce public interest in UFOs. Neither point could be checked against the sources read here, but the 1958 documents show the briefing tactic at work.^[1][6][7]

People and topics

• 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.
• John McClellan — Senator whose Government Operations subcommittee was persuaded not to hold UFO hearings in 1958.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
• Robertson Panel — Robertson Panel
• NICAP — The leading U.S. civilian UFO group of the 1950s and 1960s.
• House Armed Services Committee — The House committee that held a UFO hearing in 1966.
• Michigan swamp gas UFO reports — A 1966 wave of UFO reports in Michigan that J. Allen Hynek suggested might be marsh gas.

On the Timeline

• John Lilly and the alleged hypnosis project (1958) — An alleged Air Force project used drugs and hypnosis; one participant believed he contacted aliens.
• Henderson UFO briefing (1958) (20 June 1958) — The Air Force briefs members of Congress on handling constituent questions about UAP.

See every 1958 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena”, “Donald Keyhoe”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.