LETTER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81R00560R000100080016-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 13, 2005
• Sequence Number: 16
• Publication Date: October 1, 1957
• Content Type: LETTER

5X1
Approved For1eaoe 2005/0 /20 : CIA? RDP81 ROO56C00100080016-7
1 October 1957
You have picked an interesting subject for research, and I wish
you every success in carrying it out in a scholarly and objective manner.
I spent a summer on the Air Force study of UFO's back at the height of
the scare, and-learned a good deal about the subject at that time.
In answer to the questions in your letter of 25 September:
1. I have no reason to doubt all of the reports of UFO's (although
an appreciable fraction of them were proved to be fraudulent), but this is
only to say that I accept the fact that people see objects in the sky and
cannot identify them. A very large percentage of such reports (90% or more,
as I remember) were definitely identified by astronomers and meteorologists
as well known objects such as the planet Venus, or meteorological balloons,
or high flying aircraft. The group I worked with identified several "in-
explicable" reports with less common phenomena--sunlight flashing on sea
gulls in one photographed case--and I saw no evidence of "intelligently
controlled" objects or, in fact, of anything but phenomena that could be
explained were adequate information available.
2. The whole history of science supports my stand that observable
phenomena can be logically fitted into scientific theories that "explain"
them in the common sense of that word. I recognize that many claims of
miracles have been made throughout history, but miracles, by definition,
are unusual, and the vast number of natural, orderly phenomena outweighs
the minor incidence of miracles in increasing degree. The former "miracles"
of lightening, magnetism, and electricity, are now explained in garde
schools. By this admittedly inductive logic, common to most of physical
and biological science, I conclude that the likelihood of truly inexplicable
phenomena is vanishingly small.
3. My personal investigation of UFO reports, together with what I
have read in the press accounts that you proper]?- class as sensational,
and in books like D. H. Menzel's, leads me to conclude that the explanation
lies in the logical defect. It is this: UFO's form a class of all celestial
observations that cannot immediately be explained. There is no other truly
common feature: some manifestations are optical, others are detected by
radar; some are points, others circular, others patterned; some are seen
by night, others by day; etc. The implication that they are somehow re-
lated is a false one, as we know from the large proportion positively
identified after the fact (what relation is there between Venus and a
Approved For Release 2005/07/20 : CIA-RDP81 R00560R000100080016-7
 Approved Folease 2005/07/20: CIA-RDP81 R005 000100080016-7
meteorological balloon?). Calling all unidentified objects in the.sky
"flying saucers" or, even, UFO's (Venus doesn't "fly" in any proper sense
of that work) is like calling any word I cannot understand "Greek." The
class of all words I cannot understand would scarcely form a single
language. Therefore, the explanation of UFO's as a class is simply that
they are not a uniform class but a hodge-podge of widely disparate, partly
described phenomena that were seen in the sky.
4. Covered in 3, above.
5. Further research in the conventional sciences of astronomy,
meteorology, and physics will learn more about many of the separate
phenomena that are reported as UFO's. The sociological phenomenon of
"flying saucer scares" might be studied by psychologists and sociologists,
but I suspect that it is already understood.
6. I know that my sta?ements above do not constitute a "proof,"
and feel that the subject, by its nature, precludes any rigorous proof or
dis-proof. But I am confident that most men of reason who have studied
` ?1- +In- ,a,+~ will come to the same con-
i
ence,
sc
clusion.
5X1
25X1
Approved For Release 2005/07/20 : CIA-RDP81 R00560R000100080016-7