ANALYSES OF FLYING SAUCERS, FROM 'ABLE' TO 'ZOWIE!'

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000303250001-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: December 30, 1973
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

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To Keyhoe, the truth is that beings
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years of effort by the nu' rote' zinc'
be explained awa%, and Condc
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13y CHARLES FOSTER RANSOM
Flyin;; s;:llccrs haven't gone away' yet 1. took 911 of some 25.000 reported
..f t~-.f Frn' nrnniP'S Illinds. In spite or TAr..o?',ortnrc of them could
A recent Gallup Poll found that 11 per I{vnek went through thousands in his
cent of the adult population think they 20-year stint, threw out most of them for
from outer space far more advanced
technically than humans are reconnoi-
tering the earth, just as men have re-
connoitered the moon and Mars lately -
perhaps with a view to eventual coloni-
zation or conquest.
Hynek has a chapter debating whether
the Air P'or(e investigations he had to
live with were so sloppy because the
command thought the project all non-
sense - or whether the government had
have personally seen an Unidentified lack of enough facts, threw out many
} Ring Object, and 51 per cent think more for having witnesses he did not
I'} Os are real and not imaginary, trust, threw out still others for not hay
hoaxes or misperceptions of natural oh- ing at least two witnesses.
jects. Thee percentages, are sharp in- But he still ended up with hundreds of
creates since 1966, sightings of high "strangeness" in what
I TO reports come In waves, and they thought they saw, related by what
many reports are demonstrably mis- Ifynek considered reliable witnesses:
perceptions of common things: a bright aviators, law officers, engineers.
shooting, star: a high-flying weather bal- Typically, Hynek's UFOs were obiects
loon caught in the jet stream, etc. Some apparently at least 30 feet across, flying
are proba'bly' hysteria - especially ? the with speeds, fast turns and hovering
marry "contactee" cases, where a per- maneuver's far beyond the ability of any
son claims to be selected by beings known man-made craft. UFOs left char-
from outer space to give the world a acteristic burn marks oil the ground, he
message. i reports, which is reminiscent of the
)x' (u l ('ondon?s eonclu>iuns,..
Four recent hooks bracket the present
state of the public mind, from "Able" to,
"Half-baked" to "'LO\VlE!"
J. Allen Ifynek is Able. He Is the
longtime chairman of the department of
astronomy at Northwestern University
and was scientific consultant to the Air
Force ITO stud; for 20 years. People
used to ask him t6 name a good book on
the subject. Last year one came out: his
own: "The I'F'O Experience; a Scien-
tific Inquiry" (ilegneryl.
Over the 20 years, Iltnek changed
from a complete skeptic to a man who
believes there is a real UFO phenome-
non with mans uniformities which
should he studied seriously. He thinks
precious studies inadequate, including
his own, and especially the two-year,
$.;00,000 study done for the Air Force by
a University of Colorado group hearted
by Edward U. Condon.
The Condon report carne out early In
19,9. Condon concluded the t not alf
sightings could be explained naturally,
but tnn~t could, and th:lt Ui?'Os were not.
\torlIt further studs'. Other ri nti;is .rl
oih,'r r Banter's of the report czpr?c'sed
different vie s, with supptwtin g f,u? ts.
i;ut the report was so lung, and rclr';is d
a day than ('ondon?s, that few gat
a real probe going on secretly. lie con-
cluded the command thought UFOs non-
sense, though some pilots did not.
The idea of the Air Force keeping so
gigantic a secret for decades is harder
to believe than the flying saucers them-
selves. Put Keyhoe down as half-bak(,d.
But Keyhole himself says, "Most UFO.
occupant stories are obvious hoaxes."
Now collie two "ZOWIES!"
Erich von Daniken's "Chariots of the
Gods" came out in his lative Germany
in 1963, in the U.S. in 1970, in a Bantam
paperback in 1971. and now claims over
3,500,000 copies in print. 'Daniken has a
burnt circles found in soybean fields in sequel out, too.
north central Iowa a few years back. -Daniken runs through myths, legends
''Close encounters" by reliable, mug- and miracles of the past, and some
tiple witnesses were rarer. But Hynck puzzling to hiin) bits of archeology and
checked out a number of those, and concludes that there have been L Fos
even cases in winch occupants resem- for thousands of years, and that UFOs
blip,", humans or cites were seen briefly from space provide a rational ex-
thrcu?h windows c.r on the ground n^at' planation for all these puzzles.
the craft, but 111\n --k is still suspicious of Does a cave painting show a man with
t'cl^.orted "hung-tnoitis " horns and a mask" He is a spaceman
Intelligent life elsewhere in the solar with antennae. Did Ezekiel sec the
system is unlikely, and the'nearest stars wheel, way tip in the middle of the air'
are m;+ny trillions of miles a-Nay, But
A space ship to Daniken. Did ancient
many scientists now think there are life- Peruvians do some puzzlin, earth sculp-
l
bcariat, t 1< tc.s sc nu-.c.lcrc in our \lil,:y tore on a gigantic scale'. :1 space port
Way-, and Soviet astrol,nysicists are ser- , and a direction pointer to Daniken.
iousi,v ntonilorin,; what may he radio Another new in 1973 is "God
s ~ nags from space. Drives it Flying Saucer" be R. L. Dione
:~ecti this year is a book by Donald F. (Bantam paperback). Dione, a teacher
i(evhoe., a retired Marine Corp, suer in Connecticut, sticks to the Christian
'A-ho has been writing on UFOs fo; tradition.
years. He long hnadrdd an org;anizalinn lie explains miracles and wonders in
:,athrring evidence about them. His new the Bible and later by UFOs, radiation,
honk is his fourth on t.1'Os: ":Aliens elrch?olnngeetic thought U?anstrn-nee,
From Space: The kcal Story of F oct et ere: the'. Star of Bethlehem, Our l.:dv of
tified Flvins, Ohjccts" (Doubleday')' Fatima, F:zckirl's hoc l, apparently
heyhoe?s. book is ,xnsational, where miraculous carts and di- Hers, Paul on
hooch is train:; hard to he factual on a die D;ai'i' i'us road. He think: :;noels
sens;tiional suit ect. l;r?thne liuni;s the
and (;~,d I,ini~rif are "s:uu?rri;ui;?, -
:Air Force knots a Ins inure thin it trlLi natural i,hiu:,s hound by pity-;ical laws
about UFOs, and )lint its lurohi-mi'n,, )including laces not yet discoycred.l
and ('onion's art part of a dr iii?, r:iio }loth Iianikcn and Dione are far front
policy of secrecy crt)nuird by the Cell- the spirit of science. in spite of Iheir
STAT
Ira) iI I tc Ii nce A,:rncy, hcr.uts' the srlrnce-ficii?n ja-g o But Ih,?c click
('hmlr 1 n,?(rr Rmtsom fs n virniher ('IA fears Iii ti;il;,lII c:ou1c1 Ii nil "t the' with :, rnrlhni;, ui tar of lice ;i; e
of 'I h&. !, ,ie;'~ r lilnrinl nn nn c/nlf ~1ltTT ~'
I'll .. ri,.,r ,.. -.1, , ',y? 1o~ii;-
'?" Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-00552R000303250001-9 ,. 1