Condon Committee

The Condon Committee was the University of Colorado's Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, conducted from 1966 to 1968 under a contract with the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and directed by the physicist Edward Condon. Its report, transmitted to the Secretary of the Air Force on 31 October 1968, stated that "nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge." A review by a panel of the National Academy of Sciences and the report were the stated bases for the termination of Project Blue Book on 17 December 1969.¹²

Origin in the Air Force

In March 1966 an ad hoc committee of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board chaired by Brian O'Brien, with members Launor F. Carter, Jesse Orlansky, Richard Porter, Carl Sagan and Willis H. Ware, recommended that the Air Force contract with a few universities for investigation of selected sightings. On 31 August 1966 Colonel Ivan C. Atkinson, Deputy Executive Director of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, wrote to the University of Colorado asking it to participate as grantee, with the guarantee that "the scientists involved will have complete freedom to design and develop techniques for the investigation." O'Brien, as chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Air Force Systems Command of the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council, had advised the Office on the suitability of Colorado.¹³

Philip J. Klass, a senior editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology and a founding fellow of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, wrote that when the Air Force sought a prestigious institution in the spring of 1966, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and others declined, and that James E. McDonald of the University of Arizona "was lobbying to obtain the contract"; the dissertation of Paul McCarthy on McDonald states that McDonald "first thought he might be the principal investigator" and, when that possibility waned, volunteered his services.⁴⁵

J. Thomas Ratchford of the Office asked Condon on 31 July 1966 to take the scientific direction of the project; Condon wrote that Ratchford was introduced by Dr. W. W. Kellogg, associate director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and at that time a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. Condon objected, mentioned the names of scientists "of considerable distinction who had already taken an active interest in UFOs," and was told that they were disqualified for having "taken sides"; he wrote that the objections "were met by counter-arguments in the form of an appeal to patriotic duty" and an emphasis on the shortness of the task, then envisioned as fifteen months.⁶ Ratchford visited Boulder in late July 1966 and, with the Office's executive director William Price, addressed University administrators and faculty on 10 August 1966. The contract was announced on 7 October 1966.⁷ According to the Condon Report it provided $313,000 for the first fifteen months, 1 November 1966 to 31 January 1968; the CIA historian Gerald K. Haines gave $325,000 for eighteen months, and a Central Intelligence Agency memorandum of February 1967 gives $300,000.⁷⁸⁹ The report states that the contract provided that "the planning, direction and conclusions of the Colorado project were to be conducted wholly independently of the Air Force," that the Air Force was to furnish its records, and that "we were assured that the federal government would withhold no information on the subject."⁷ Brigadier General Edward Giller and Ratchford were the Air Force coordinators.⁸ The University's president, J. R. Smiley, wrote in the letter of transmittal that the Air Force had followed "a policy of complete noninterference."¹⁰

Klass wrote that the proposal, incorporated in the contract, promised that "the work will be conducted under conditions of strictest objectivity by investigators who, as carefully as can be determined, have no predilections or preconceived positions on the UFO question," and that David Saunders, who later became a principal investigator, had himself participated in writing the proposal.⁴

Staff

Condon was scientific director; Stuart Cook, chairman of the psychology department, and Franklin E. Roach of the Environmental Science Services Administration were principal investigators; Robert J. Low, assistant dean of the Graduate School, was coordinator.³ The staff list in the report also names Saunders as principal investigator, William A. Scott as co-principal investigator, Norman Levine as research associate, William K. Hartmann of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, and the journalist Daniel S. Gillmor as editor. Contributors came from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, the Environmental Science Services Administration, the Stanford Research Institute, the University of Arizona and other institutions; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration named a liaison officer.¹¹

Condon's entry in the staff list records that he was a former director of the National Bureau of Standards, associate director of research for Westinghouse Electric Corporation, director of research for Corning Glass Works, a member of the committee named in 1941 that established the atomic bomb program, and a past president of the American Physical Society. A House Un-American Activities Committee report of 1 March 1948 had called him "one of the weakest links in our atomic security" while he directed the Bureau of Standards. The historian Jessica Wang wrote that no evidence of wrongdoing emerged from the inquiries that followed, that he left the Bureau in August 1951 for Corning, and that in October 1954 the Secretary of the Navy revoked his clearance for a classified Navy project of Corning after the Washington Post reported that it had been granted, with Vice President Richard Nixon publicly taking credit.¹¹¹²

Civilian groups and the field network

The Condon Report states that the project's preliminary study included briefings by Lieutenant Colonel Hector Quintanilla, the head of Blue Book, by J. Allen Hynek and by Donald Keyhoe and Richard Hall of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.¹³ Klass wrote that the project's "early warning network" of several dozen persons consisted principally of that committee's field investigators, and that Levine and Saunders helped decide which reports received field investigation; Appendix I of the report lists the network's participants.⁴¹⁴

Hynek and others at Northwestern's Dearborn Observatory, including Jacques Vallee and William Powers, are acknowledged in the report for consultation "voluntarily supplied." The same appendix thanks McDonald for information on UFO matters in Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania "which he studied during a trip there which was sponsored by the U.S. Office of Naval Research."¹⁵ Hynek's contract records for November 1967 show him recommending that the project send an investigator to Newfield, New York, and noting "They did."¹⁶

The Low memorandum

Low's memorandum "Some Thoughts on the UFO Project," dated 9 August 1966 and addressed to E. James Archer, dean of the Graduate School, and Thurston E. Manning, vice-president for academic affairs, was written in preparation for the meeting of 10 August 1966 with Air Force Office of Scientific Research staff, before the University decided to accept the contract. Condon wrote in the report that a copy "was later stolen from Low's personal files and given wide distribution by persons desirous of discrediting this study," that the memorandum was "at most, preliminary 'thinking out loud' about the proposed project by an individual having no authority to make formal decisions," that one proposal in it, "to stress investigation, not of physical phenomena, but rather of the people who do the observing," ran contrary to the procedure followed, and that he was not aware of the memorandum until eighteen months after it was written.⁶

Klass quoted the memorandum as stating that "the Duke study was done by believers who, after they finished, convinced no one. Our study would be conducted almost exclusively by non-believers who, although they couldn't possibly prove a negative result, could and probably would add an impressive body of evidence that there is no reality to the observations," and: "The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study, but to the scientific community would present the image of a group of non-believers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer." Klass wrote that "trick" can mean "the art or knack of doing something skillfully," and that Lewis M. Branscomb, chairman of the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics at Boulder, told him Low had used the word in that sense.⁴

Klass wrote that a project member "believed to have been" the project's administrative assistant Mary Lou Armstrong found the memorandum in August 1967, and that Saunders allowed Keyhoe to copy it on the day before Thanksgiving 1967 and encouraged him to show it to the National Investigations Committee's board. According to Klass, citing Saunders, McDonald and Hynek met in Denver on 12 December 1967 with Saunders, Levine and Armstrong, and Hynek left early, after which McDonald raised the memorandum.⁴ Hynek's own log of November 1967 records that he told a caller about the Volunteer Flight Officer's Network that he would attend a meeting in Denver "unofficially, and at my own expense," and that he did so on 13 December.¹⁶ The dissertation of McCarthy states that McDonald wrote to Condon's coordinator on 31 January 1968 quoting the memorandum, and that McDonald and NICAP's Gordon Lore and Keyhoe resolved to put it on the record at the National Academy and at the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.⁵

Dismissal of Saunders and Levine

Both Klass and McCarthy state that Condon dismissed Saunders and Levine after McDonald's letter, Klass giving 7 February 1968 and McCarthy 8 February; McCarthy states that Condon accused them of stealing the memorandum from private files and fired them for "incompetence." Klass wrote that Armstrong resigned shortly afterward.⁴⁵ On 9 February 1968 McDonald sent the memorandum and his letter to the National Academy of Sciences, and on 11 February sent a copy to James Hughes of the Office of Naval Research, the contract monitor for McDonald's atmospheric-research contracts. Klass wrote that McDonald "had covertly used these research funds for his UFO investigations and travels, with Hughes's tacit approval"; McCarthy wrote that McDonald said he forwarded the material to keep Hughes apprised "in light of the day when he would apply to the ONR for funding to do UFO work."⁴⁵ The report's staff appendix still lists Saunders as principal investigator and Levine as research associate.¹¹

Publicity and Congress

On 30 April 1968 the National Investigations Committee held a press conference at which Klass asked Keyhoe about his own field work; the same day Representative J. Edward Roush of Indiana spoke in the House, calling the project a likely "$500,000 fiasco." The May 14, 1968 issue of the magazine Look carried John G. Fuller's "Flying Saucer Fiasco," described by Klass as presenting the project as "a half-million dollar 'trick.'"⁴ On 29 July 1968 the House Committee on Science and Astronautics held a one-day symposium, with Roush presiding, at which Hynek, McDonald, Sagan, Robert L. Hall, James A. Harder and Robert M. L. Baker testified, and at which Representative Donald Rumsfeld introduced Hynek as a constituent. Klass, relying on McCarthy, wrote that Roush allowed McDonald to select the six scientists and to use his office and telephone credit card, and that after Roush's defeat in November 1968 he was named to the committee's board of directors.⁴¹⁷

McCarthy's account adds that Roush asked the National Academy, Frederick Seitz of the Academy, to examine the Look allegations, the dismissals and cases recommended by Hynek, and said he would suspend a Government Accounting Office review of the project that he had initiated until the Academy finished.⁵

The Central Intelligence Agency and the National Photographic Interpretation Center

Section II of the Condon Report says that "one person with whom we have dealt actually maintains that the Air Force has nothing to do with UFOs, claiming that this super-secret matter is in the hands of the Central Intelligence Agency which, he says, installed one of its own agents as scientific director of the Colorado study," and that allegations of a conspiracy "have, so far as any evidence that has come to our attention, no factual basis whatever." The report adds that where sightings involve classified missile launchings or classified radar systems "this fact is merely stated" and that these reservations affected "a negligible fraction" of the material.⁷

A memorandum for the record of the National Photographic Interpretation Center, numbered TID-50/67 and dated 23 February 1967, states that the Air Force "has let a $300,000 contract" to the University of Colorado; that on 20 February 1967 at 0915 Condon and four members of his team visited the Center, accompanied by "Dr. Richard Lowe, University of Colorado," Saunders, "Dr. William Price, Executive Director of AFRST," and Ratchford; and that the clearance level for the meeting was Secret. The Colorado project's coordinator was Robert J. Low. The memorandum records that in a discussion of ten to fifteen minutes between Arthur C. Lundahl, the Center's director, and Condon it was "clearly established" that work by the Center to assist Condon "will not be identified as work accomplished by CIA," that "Dr. Condon was advised by Mr. Lundahl to make no reference to CIA in regard to this work effort," that Condon said that if he felt it necessary to obtain an official Agency comment "he would make a separate distinct entry into CIA not related to contacts he has with NPIC," and that the Center "will not prepare any written comments, will not analyze information with the intent of drawing a conclusion, nor prepare written reports." Briefings followed on photogrammetry, microdensitometry and the Center's measuring instruments, and after lunch the group left for a meeting with Giller at the Pentagon. The memorandum refers to "the second UFO project assigned TID," the Center's Technical Intelligence Division.⁹

Haines's history for the Central Intelligence Agency states that in February 1967 Giller asked Lundahl for an informal liaison to give the Condon Committee technical advice on photographs; that Lundahl and the Deputy Director for Intelligence, R. Jack Smith, approved it "as a way of 'preserving a window'" on the study; and that they wanted the Agency to keep a low profile, take no part in writing conclusions, and not formally acknowledge any work done.⁸ A second memorandum for the record, dated 8 May 1967, describes a briefing at 0900 on 5 May 1967 on an analysis of the Zanesville, Ohio, photographs, attended by Condon, "Dr. Robert Lowe," Hartmann of the University of Arizona (printed "Hartman"), "Dr. Charles Reed, National Research Council," Ratchford and Center staff. It records that Condon "stated he had for the first time a scientific analysis of a UFO that would stand up to investigation"; that further analysis would pass to University of Colorado control "but Dr. Condon indicated he wished to keep a channel open into our organization"; that he "was most appreciative of the unofficial role NPIC had played"; and that it was suggested to review all the photography held by the National Investigations Committee, which "would put Dr. Condon in a position to say that he had reviewed and analyzed all the photography in NICAP files, and was now depending on the American public to furnish him new photography."¹⁸ Haines wrote that the analysis debunked that sighting, that Agency officials also agreed that the committee could release the full Durant report on the Robertson Panel with minor deletions, and that the final report "did not mention CIA participation."⁸

The acknowledgments appendix names the Air Force, NASA, the Environmental Science Services Administration, the Naval Observatory, the Internal Revenue Service's Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Division, the Forest Service, the Federal Aviation Agency, the Library of Congress and the State Department, and does not name the Agency or the Center.¹⁵ Saunders, listed as a visitor in the Center's memorandum of February 1967, was dismissed in February 1968.⁴⁹

Treatment of the secrecy question

In the historical section the Condon Report adopted the term "conspiracy hypothesis" for "the view that some agency of the Government either within the Air Force, the Central Intelligence Agency, or elsewhere knows all about UFOs and is keeping the knowledge secret." Condon wrote that without denying the possibility "we decided very early in the study, that we were not likely to succeed in carrying out a form of counter-espionage against our own Government," and decided to "keep alert to any indications" that not all essential facts were being given to the project. He continued: "Although we found no such evidence, it must be conceded that there may be a supersecret government UFO laboratory hidden away somewhere of whose existence we are not aware. But I doubt it." He added that about halfway through the study a staff member of a national magazine telephoned to ask about a report that the Colorado study was a cover story for a "Top Secret" study for the Defense Department's "Martian Invasion Defense Program," and that his answer was that if it were true it would be Top Secret and he would not be at liberty to say.¹⁹

The same chapter reproduces the 23 September 1947 letter of Lieutenant General Nathan F. Twining, which lists among the possibilities that the objects were "of domestic origin" and "the product of some high security project not known to AC/AS-2 or this Command," and comments on it: "Where secrecy is known to exist one can never be absolutely sure that he knows the complete truth."¹⁹

Conclusions of the report

Section I states that "further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby," that "we have no evidence of secrecy concerning UFO reports," that "only so much attention to the subject should be given as the Department of Defense deems to be necessary strictly from a defense point of view," and that the defense function "could be performed within the framework established for intelligence and surveillance operations without the continuance of a special unit such as Project Blue Book, but this is a question for defense specialists rather than research scientists." It also recommends that teachers "refrain from giving students credit for school work based on their reading of the presently available UFO books and magazine articles."²⁰

In the report Condon wrote: "Had I known of the extent of the emotional commitment of the UFO believers and the extremes of conduct to which their faith can lead them, I certainly would never have undertaken the study."⁶

Review and termination

The report went to Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown under cover of Smiley's letter of 31 October 1968. The National Academy panel, chaired by Gerald M. Clemence, wrote that it was "unanimous in the opinion that this has been a very creditable effort to apply objectively the relevant techniques of science" and that "the least likely explanation of UFOs is the hypothesis of extraterrestrial visitations by intelligent beings." The Air Force release of 17 December 1969 says the report was released to the public in January 1969; Haines gives April 1969.⁸¹⁰²¹

Hynek had told the House Armed Services Committee on 5 April 1966 that "the body of data accumulated since 1948 through the Air Force investigations deserves close scrutiny by a civilian panel of physical and social scientists."²² An Air Force action memorandum of 20 October 1969, with the signature block of Brigadier General C. H. Bolender, cited the report and the Academy review as reasons that continuation of Blue Book "cannot be justified, either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science."²