Airline pilots and the "Big Brother" gag rules (1958)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Type | Event (newspaper report) |
|---|---|
| Published | 22 December 1958 |
| Newspaper | Newark Star-Ledger, New Jersey |
| Reporter | John Lester |
| Sources | More than fifty veteran airline pilots (names withheld) |
| Complaint | Air Force UFO secrecy "bordering on the ridiculous" |
| Penalty cited | Up to ten years in prison and a $10,000 fine |
| Directive | Probably JANAP 146 |
| Date | 21 December 1958 |
| Topics | Military encounters (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Congress & law (topic) |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 62 |
| Year | 1958 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1958 on the UAP Timeline |
On 22 December 1958 the Newark Star-Ledger published a story by John Lester. It reported that more than fifty veteran airline pilots, all of whom said they had seen at least one UFO while flying, called Air Force secrecy about UFOs "bordering on the ridiculous". One described the policy as a lesson in lying and the "Big Brother" attitude carried to the extreme. The pilots said military reporting rules threatened anyone who broke silence with prison. Their names were withheld at their airlines' request.[1][6]
The story
The pilots, each with more than fifteen years at major airlines, spoke to the paper on 21 December 1958. They said that when they reported UFOs they were usually treated as incompetent and told to keep quiet, and that their sightings were attributed to mirages, lightning and other natural phenomena. One pilot who had appeared on national television was reportedly ordered to "cease and desist", even though his airline had approved the appearance.[1]
The secrecy rules
The pilots said that under a Joint Chiefs of Staff order, a pilot who failed to keep absolute secrecy after reporting a UFO through official channels faced up to ten years in prison and a $10,000 fine. This appears to refer to the military communications directive JANAP 146, under which sightings radioed to military commands were treated as vital intelligence whose unauthorised disclosure could violate the Espionage Act. It was one of several directives, alongside Air Force Regulation 200-2, that governed military and government UFO reporting.[1][2][3]
Anonymity
The pilots' names were withheld at the direction of their airlines. The paper said it had the names and would publish them if the "strict silence" ban were lifted.[1]
Pilots' reluctance to report was long-standing. After his 1947 sighting, the private pilot Kenneth Arnold said that if he ever saw such a thing again, "even if it's a 10-story building, I won't say a word about it". In an informal survey of Air Force pilots by Project Grudge in the late 1940s, one respondent said: "If a spaceship was flying wing-tip to wing-tip formation with me, I would not report it." The NASA perceptual psychologist Richard Haines later compiled AIRCAT, a catalogue of more than 3,000 sightings by aviators. He noted that a pilot who comes forward "is putting his reputation on the line and maybe his job", and is likely to request anonymity.[5]
Legacy
The complaints were taken up by the civilian group NICAP, which argued that the Air Force was covering up UFO evidence. They appear in Loren Gross's detailed chronology of the 1950s, UFOs: A History, in its volume for November–December 1958. Lon Strickler's blog later discussed the report in its series "The Fusaro Files", on the intensification of the UFO cover-up.[1][6]
The issue resurfaced in the 2020s, when pilots and members of Congress again said commercial aircrews felt discouraged from reporting UAP. At the House Intelligence subcommittee's UAP hearing of 17 May 2022, standardising the civilian reporting process was discussed, because most reports in the military's database came from military officers. Under Secretary of Defense Ronald Moultrie called for cooperation with the Federal Aviation Administration. New reporting arrangements followed through the FAA and the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.[1][4]
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.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- JANAP 146(C) — JANAP 146(C)
- NICAP — The leading U.S. civilian UFO group of the 1950s and 1960s.
- AARO — The Pentagon office set up in 2022 to investigate UAP.
On the Timeline
- USS Franklin D. Roosevelt sighting (1958) (October 1958) — A Navy veteran says he saw an orange cigar-shaped object with figures inside near Cuba.
- French scientist Mr. L at Wright-Patterson (1959) — A French scientist claims he was asked to work at Wright-Patterson on recovered material.
See every 1958 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- U.S. congressional hearings on UFOs — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- "The Fusaro files, part II: intensification of the UFO cover-up", Goodreads author blog · goodreads.com · archived copy
- CIA document describing JANAP 146, CIA reading room · cia.gov · archived copy
- "UFO reporting procedures and regulations", The Black Vault · theblackvault.com · archived copy
- 2022 United States Congress hearings on UFOs — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Pilots and UFO reporting — Patrick Gross · ufology.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- sohp.us · sohp.us · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “2022 United States Congress hearings on UFOs”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
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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