Topic
Official programs, reports, laws and hearings, from Project Blue Book to AARO and the National Archives. 366 events, newest first.
GovernmentApr 1960
Radio astronomer Frank Drake used an 85-foot dish at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory to listen near 1420 MHz for signals from Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani from April to July 1960. Nothing artificial was found; it began scientific SETI.
Photo: NRAO/AUI/NSF, CC BY 4.0
Government28 Feb 1960
NICAP made public a December 1959 Air Force Inspector General directive telling commands to treat UFO reports as serious defense business. NICAP board member Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first CIA director, said a copy went to Congress and called for open congressional hearings.
Photo: U.S. Gov., Public domain
Government1960
Astronomer J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force's scientific consultant on UFO reports, chaired Northwestern University's astronomy department and directed its Dearborn Observatory from 1960 to 1978, the base for his later UFO research.
Photo: United States Government, Public domain
GovernmentApr 1958
An April 1958 CIA memo answering letters from Leon Davidson and NICAP's Donald Keyhoe recommended sending them a declassified Robertson Panel report written in late 1957 that omitted any CIA tie. The CIA kept refusing to release the full report until 1975.
GovernmentOct 1955
Air Force Secretary Donald Quarles made public the Battelle statistical analysis of saucer reports (Special Report 14), saying the Air Force found no sign of technology beyond known science. Critics later argued the study's 'unknowns' were not resolved by the data.
Photo: United States Air Force, Public domain
Government5 May 1955
Blue Book Special Report No. 14, a statistical analysis of about 3,200 reports through 1952 carried out with Battelle Memorial Institute, judged it highly improbable that the unidentified cases reflected technology beyond known science. The Air Force made it public in October 1955.
Photo: US Air Force, Public domain
Government15 Dec 1954
Asked about European saucer investigations and claims the Air Force suspected extraterrestrial origins, President Eisenhower said nothing new had reached him and that a trusted Air Force source had told him it was inaccurate to think they came from another planet.
Photo: White House, Public domain
Government1954
Canada's Department of Transport ended Project Magnet, radio engineer Wilbert Smith's 1950-54 study of whether UFOs used magnetic propulsion. Smith's experiments were inconclusive, and his public belief that UFOs were extraterrestrial had drawn bad publicity.
Photo: Unknown photographer, Public domain
Government26 Aug 1953
The Air Force issued AFR 200-2, 'Unidentified Flying Objects Reporting', setting how bases report and investigate sightings. Its 1954 revision let officials discuss a case with the press only once the object was identified as familiar; AFR 200-2 governed Project Blue Book into the 1960s.
Photo: United States Air Force, Public domain
Government17 Jan 1953
A CIA-convened panel of scientists chaired by physicist H. P. Robertson reviewed UFO reports and found no direct threat to national security. It recommended training and public education to strip the subject of its special status.
Government1953
FBI records released under FOIA show the Bureau tracked contactee George Adamski and the flying-saucer clubs that promoted him in the 1950s, filed under espionage, and record that FBI and Air Force OSI agents had interviewed him. The file is now on the FBI's online Vault.
Photo: Unknown (press photo), Public domain
Government31 Dec 1952
Project Blue Book's Status Report No. 8 summarized summer 1952 conferences its contract astronomer, J. Allen Hynek, held with 44 professional astronomers. Five had seen things they could not readily explain; most were neither hostile nor very interested in the subject.
Photo: Unknown author, Public domain
Government4 Dec 1952
At the CIA director's request the Intelligence Advisory Committee discussed UFOs and agreed the DCI should enlist selected scientists to review the evidence and draft a security directive. Air Force intelligence chief Maj. Gen. John Samford offered cooperation; the review became the Robertson Panel.
Government2 Dec 1952
CIA science intelligence chief H. Marshall Chadwell sent the Director of Central Intelligence a memo urging National Security Council attention to UFOs and outside scientific study. Two days later an intelligence advisory committee agreed to convene scientists, which became the Robertson Panel.
Photo: US Government, Public domain
GovernmentOct 1952
CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith signed a memo telling the Psychological Strategy Board he was sending the National Security Council a proposal on unidentified flying objects, which he said had psychological warfare as well as intelligence implications, and asked the board to discuss them.
Photo: Unknown, Public domain
GovernmentOct 1952
An FBI memo from V. P. Keay to A. H. Belmont relayed Air Intelligence's view that about 90 percent of saucer reports were explainable but a small share of credible ones were not, citing a film studied by the Air Technical Intelligence Center and officials weighing 'interplanetary ships'.
GovernmentOct 1952
Canadian Department of Transport engineer Wilbert Smith, head of Project Magnet, set up an observatory at Shirleys Bay near Ottawa to measure magnetic or radio disturbances he expected UFOs to cause. Smith believed the craft were probably extraterrestrial; the project was shut down in 1954.
Photo: Unknown photographer, Public domain
Government24 Sep 1952
OSI chief H. Marshall Chadwell told the Director of Central Intelligence that saucer reports deserved NSC attention. An October follow-up from the intelligence deputy and Chadwell, attaching his 24 September memo, cited mass psychology and air-defense vulnerability and asked that the NSC be advised.
Government23 Aug 1952
A CIA foreign-documents report translated a Greek newspaper story about Oskar Linke, a former East German mayor who fled west and gave a sworn statement that he and his daughter saw two men in shiny clothing beside a landed, frying-pan-shaped object that then rose and flew off.
Government1 Aug 1952
Reporting for a CIA study group formed after the 1952 sighting wave, Edward Tauss of the Office of Scientific Intelligence found most sightings easily explained but advised continued monitoring with the Air Force, while keeping CIA interest from the press and public.
