J. Allen Hynek

J. Allen Hynek was an American astronomer who advised the U.S. Air Force on reports of unidentified flying objects from 1948 until 1 July 1969, a period that covered Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book. He was an associate member of the 1953 Robertson Panel, testified to House committees in 1966 and 1968, and in 1973 founded the Center for UFO Studies.¹²

Education and war work

Hynek was born in Chicago in 1910, took a B.S. at the University of Chicago in 1931 and a Ph.D. in astrophysics in 1935, and taught at Ohio State University from 1935, as professor from 1950 to 1956 and assistant dean of the Graduate School from 1950 to 1953. He was supervisor of technical reports at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory from 1942 to 1946 and a civilian with the U.S. Navy in 1944.³

A Washington Post article, undated but referring to the Battle of the Bulge as "last December," reproduced by Project 1947 from Hynek's file at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, reported that a group of scientists "headed by Dr. Allen Hynek, astronomer loaned by Ohio State University," had disclosed the radio proximity fuze developed at Silver Spring, Maryland, as "Navy Project A," and reported that Hynek said without the proximity fuze the war probably would still be on.⁴

Consultant to Sign, Grudge and Blue Book

Hynek was the Air Force's UFO consultant from 1948, and comments "from an astronomical point of view by Dr. Hynek predominate" in the August 1949 Grudge report. He told a House committee in 1968 that the Air Force asked him twenty years earlier to assist "in weeding out those reports arising from misidentification of planets, stars, meteors, and other celestial objects," that he found some 30 percent of the then current cases very probably had astronomical causes, and that the remaining reports "were ostensibly being explained by the consultant psychologist," explanations that reminded him of "a magician saw[ing] a woman in half."¹⁵

In 1952 the Air Force's Ruppelt reexamined the 1948 death of Captain Thomas Mantell with Hynek's assistance, and Hynek concluded that the object was probably not Venus.⁵

The Robertson Panel, January 1953

The panel memorandum lists Hynek of Ohio State among two "associate members," with Frederick C. Durant. He attended the Wednesday afternoon session, both Thursday sessions and the Friday sessions. On Thursday "the Project STORK support at Battelle Memorial Institute, Columbus, was described by Dr. Hynek." On Friday he read "a prepared paper making certain observations and conclusions." In the discussion of a "sky patrol" he suggested amateur astronomers, noted that "if a program of watching could be an adjunct of planned astronomical programs, little cost would be involved," and later proposed that amateur astronomers "might be a potential source of enthusiastic talent 'to spread the gospel'" in the educational program.⁶

His name appears in braces in the online edition of the memorandum, which marks the names deleted from the version printed in the Condon Report in 1968.⁷ His paper "Unusual Aerial Phenomena" appeared in the Journal of the Optical Society of America in April 1953 (received 22 December 1952); it states that several hundred reports had been studied and that "a hovering nocturnal light" does not appear readily explainable by astronomical causes, mirages, balloons or conventional aircraft. He had it read into the House record in 1968.⁸

Jennie Zeidman, his assistant from 1953 to 1956, wrote that during her first month working for Hynek he went to Washington for the Panel, called "an associate member, a second stringer, which was odd because he had been working directly with the data for about five years," and returned saying: "They're not going to have a scientific investigation. For some strange reason they voted it down. They didn't even take a decent look at the data, and they decided to discredit them."⁹

Project Henry and the Battelle channel

Zeidman wrote that Hynek named his 1953 consultancy "Project Henry," that a courier brought him teletype reports from Wright-Patterson weekly, that Hynek was paid to investigate only reports Blue Book assigned to him, that "Hynek often said he knew the best cases were withheld," and that her pay came from Ohio State although Hynek told her: "You're working for a contractor ... A contractor who doesn't want to be known." She identified the courier from a Columbus city directory as a Battelle employee. She described Project Stork as an effort "to ascertain the capability of the Soviet Union to engage in technological warfare" and wrote that Blue Book Special Report 14, the statistical study done at the Battelle Memorial Institute, was "a product of Project Stork." She described a "Report to Stork on Blue Book Henry" of August 1953 compiling 148 flying object reports that passed through Hynek's hands between January and July 1953, with 22 percent unknowns and 10.8 percent insufficient data, and a summary of correspondence with 35 amateur astronomical societies, 19 Ground Observer Corps filter centers and 48 Civil Aeronautics Administration control towers. In summer 1953, she wrote, Blue Book's Lieutenant Bob Olsson, a sergeant and a man to whom she was not introduced questioned her in Hynek's office about the project and Hynek's attitude.⁹

Jan Aldrich's Project 1947, which hosts Hynek's contract papers, states that Project Henry "was funded by the Air Force through the Battelle Memorial Institute," that Ruppelt and Olsson forwarded cables "to either Project White Stork or directly to Hynek," and that Hynek had reported his survey of astronomers' opinions on UFOs "to Battelle Memorial Institute's Project White Stork and Project Blue Book." Blue Book Report No. 8 of 31 December 1952 summarized interviews by "an astronomical consultant" with 44 professional astronomers, of whom, it stated, 7 were completely indifferent, 12 mildly indifferent, 17 mildly interested and 8 very interested, and five had made sightings.⁴¹⁰

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Northwestern

From 1956 to 1960 Hynek was chief of the upper atmosphere studies and satellite tracking section and associate director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, and a visiting lecturer at Harvard, before becoming professor and chairman of astronomy at Northwestern University and director of its Dearborn Observatory in 1960.³ A chronology of Blue Book hosted by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, drawing on the writer Jerome Clark, states that after Major Robert J. Friend took over Blue Book in 1958, Hynek organized "the first of several meetings" between Blue Book staff and Air Technical Intelligence Center personnel in 1959 and proposed reevaluating some older reports.¹¹

Payments and contract channels in the 1960s

Hynek's services "for the Aerial Phenomena Office" from 1 July 1963 to 30 June 1968 were paid at $5,190.00 for fiscal 1964, $4,617.50 for 1965, $5,475.00 for 1966, $5,000.00 for 1967 and $3,040.00 for 1968, a total of $23,322.50, with expenses totaling $10,082.94. Subcontract 130-7000, dated 4 August 1967, between F. W. Dodge Company, a division of McGraw-Hill, and Hynek, covered 1 July 1967 to 30 June 1968 for up to 750 hours at $10 per hour, a maximum of $7,500, under prime contract F33657-67-C-1447. Its stated objectives included determining whether the phenomena "constitute a threat to the security of the United States" and "methods of exploiting the possible scientific or technical potential of these phenomena/objects," and its reports could be classified up to Secret. A cover letter from the project manager John J. Sweeney was copied to Major Quintanilla.¹²

Hynek's telephone log for November 1967, filed with the contract papers, records calls to Lieutenant Marano at Blue Book, to witnesses in several states, and to Colonel Friend, who "asked about Blue Book and had a number of comments concerning my recent article." It records Hynek recommending, "when asked," that the Condon Committee send an investigator to Newfield, New York: "They did." It records a call "relative to a report reaching me that an investigator purporting to be from the Air Force had confiscated some photographs," of which he wrote "Got nowhere in this investigation." It also records that he sent investigators to Oconto, Wisconsin, before the case was officially reported, and paid $20 toward gasoline and travel expenses, and that the case "turned out to be unequivocally Venus." The log for May 1968 records a call to Sweeney at Fairborn, Ohio, "at his request regarding forthcoming visit."¹²

In comments on Donald Keyhoe's article in the January 1966 issue of True magazine, Hynek wrote as consultant that nine of the eleven cases Keyhoe cited were not in Air Force files and that "under the present operating regulations, this office is not authorized to investigate cases not officially reported through channels," a restriction he recommended be changed so that reports made to the press and to private organizations such as the National Investigations Committee could be investigated. Of Keyhoe's statement that the government had set up 46 research projects on gravity control, Hynek wrote that he did not know "of any bonafide antigravity projects."¹³

Michigan, March 1966, and the House Armed Services Committee

Hynek investigated reports from Dexter and Hillsdale, Michigan, of 20 and 21 March 1966, with personnel of Selfridge Air Force Base and the Blue Book office, and suggested at a press conference that burning swamp gas might account for the lights. The Air Force release recorded that pranks with flares had occurred at Hillsdale and that a photograph released to the press was a time exposure of the crescent moon and Venus.¹⁴ Zeidman wrote that Hynek telephoned her from Hillsdale at midnight on 26 March 1966, told her that the Air Force had told him "Say something," and that the swamp-gas episode "distressed him terribly because in effect the Air Force had forced him to compromise his scientific integrity."⁹

On 28 March 1966 Representative Gerald Ford, House Minority Leader, wrote to the chairmen of the House Committee on Armed Services and the House Committee on Science and Astronautics that Hynek "dismissed all of them as the product of college student pranks or swamp gas or an impression created by the rising crescent moon and the planet Venus," and the accompanying news release described Hynek's explanation as "flippant." Ford enclosed a column by Roscoe Drummond and articles by Bulkley Griffin of the Griffin-Larrabee News Bureau.¹⁵

At the Armed Services Committee hearing of 5 April 1966, chaired by L. Mendel Rivers, Hynek testified with Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown. His opening statement said 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." Asked by Representative William H. Bates of Massachusetts the question put to Brown, whether anyone of scientific knowledge had concluded that the phenomena came from extraterrestrial sources, he answered that he knew "of no competent scientist who would say that these objects come from outer space," and to Representative L. N. Nedzi of Michigan he said "the possibility should be kept open as a possible hypothesis."⁵

The Condon Committee

Hynek briefed the University of Colorado's Condon Committee in its preliminary study; Hynek, Jacques Vallee and William Powers of the Dearborn Observatory are thanked in its acknowledgments for consultation "voluntarily supplied."¹⁶ The report records that "Prof. Hynek strongly believes that the teams should have four or more members" and recommends "giving each report what he calls the 'FBI treatment,'" meaning thorough interviewing and "an active quest in the neighborhood where the sighting occurred to try to discover additional witnesses."¹⁷ Philip J. Klass, quoting a book by the Condon staff member David Saunders, wrote that Hynek attended a secret meeting in Denver on 12 December 1967 with Saunders, Norman Levine, Mary Lou Armstrong and James E. McDonald, where, in Saunders's account, "Hynek wanted to create a visible group of qualified individuals who took the UFO problem seriously, so that in the event of a Congressional hearing, there would exist an organization to which the Congress could turn," and left early with a cold before McDonald raised the Low memorandum.¹⁸ Hynek's own log records attending a Denver meeting "unofficially, and at my own expense" on 13 December.¹²

Zeidman wrote that within a few months of the start of the Colorado project Hynek told her he knew it had been decided that the findings would be negative, and that for years he "had understood that he was being kept out of the inner circle, that even with his high security clearances it was judged that he had no need to know what was really going on."⁹

The House symposium, 29 July 1968

Representative Donald Rumsfeld introduced Hynek to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics: "As his Congressman I am delighted he has been invited to appear on this panel." Hynek testified as a "private citizen and scientist and not as a representative of the Air Force." He said his earlier reticence "was based on a carefully weighed decision" because "a scientist must try to be sure of his facts" and "must not cry 'wolf' unless he is reasonably sure there is a wolf." He recalled that "the then chief scientist at the Pentagon" had asked him "just how much longer we were 'going to look at this stuff,'" and that he had replied that "we hadn't really looked at it yet" in the sense that "the FBI looks at a kidnapping, a bank robbery, or a narcotics ring." He stated that "the feeling is definitely on the increase that we should either fish or cut bait" and "my recommendation is to fish," and that he had "private information from a very large number of scientists who are interested." He recommended that Congress establish a "UFO Scientific Board of Inquiry, properly funded," and that the United States seek United Nations cooperation for an "international clearinghouse for the exchange of information," and stated that "my swamp gas record in the Michigan UFO melee should suffice to quash any such ideas" of his being a believer. Asked by Representative Hechler whether the Air Force had measured up to a thorough scientific analysis, he answered that the invitation letter "strongly stated that we would not discuss the Air Force participation in these matters, and I would like to therefore not speak to that point."⁸

End of the consultancy and the Center for UFO Studies

An Air Force memorandum of 20 October 1969, with the signature block of Brigadier General C. H. Bolender, states that Hynek "served as a scientific consultant until 1 July 1969" and recommends "not renewing the consultant contract."¹⁹ On 3 March 1969 Hynek, signing as director of the Lindheimer Astronomical Research Center, had written to Colonel George R. Weinbrenner, commander of the Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson, enclosing a "Preliminary Proposal for Subject Investigation," dated 14 March 1969, for a pilot study of reports of cars losing ignition and lights near luminous objects. The proposal cites "the potential military* and scientific value of this electrical damping phenomenon," with an asterisked note quoting an Associated Press report of 9 November 1957 that "a device capable of disrupting the operation of motor vehicles" was something the armed forces would like developed, while the chief engineer of the National Inventors Council said he knew of no research aimed at producing one. It states that Hynek had compiled "well over one hundred such reports," that a second phase "will and must" be entered into as a major effort "calling for the deployment of the best scientific facilities of the Air Force and its contractors," and that if the phenomenon is real "it is obviously in the national interest to gain an understanding of the phenomenon and its practical application before other nations, in which this phenomenon is also reported to occur, gain an advantage." It asks for "full and complete personal access by the Principal Investigator to Blue Book data of all degrees of classification," includes a consulting fee for the principal investigator, and states that the project should be "entirely apart from Project Blue Book."²⁰

Zeidman wrote in 1991 that the researcher Brian Parks had obtained, through the Freedom of Information Act, Hynek's record of employment as a Foreign Technology Division consultant from 1970 to 1974, "an executive appointment, beginning in April 1970, less than six months after Blue Book's official closure," working "only a few days each year," and that it was not known whether the work related to UFOs.²¹ She wrote that in October 1973 she drove Hynek from a small building at Wright-Patterson to Columbus, that he introduced her to a man in dress uniform who "may have been a major," that he "would not tell me anything about what he was doing at Wright-Patterson," and that on 26 December 1976 in his Evanston home he said: "It's very definitely connected with intelligence somewhere."²¹

His book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry appeared in 1972, and in 1973 he started the Center for UFO Studies, serving as scientific director until his death in 1986 and naming Mark Rodeghier as his successor.² Project 1947 states that the Center received most of the National Investigations Committee's files, that Hynek held a copy of the Blue Book microfilm, and that some reports he forwarded under his contract do not appear in the Blue Book files.⁴ Hynek appeared in a cameo in the 1977 film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, on which he was a consultant, and questionnaires of the Center were available in theater lobbies.⁴²²