If there's any one element on which all parties to
the Unidentified Flying Object controversy agree, it's
the fact that every thing about UFOs is up in the air.
And the situation didn't change a whit yesterday as
the Leader of the National Investigations Committee on
Aerial Phenomena announced in State Department tone
and rhetoric that "we have broken relations" with a
government-funded UF0 investigation.
Retired Marine Corps Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe charged
that the University of Colorado study headed by
physicist Edward U. Condon was anything but scientific
and that Condon and the resident project head were
openly biased.
The move followed publication in Look magazine of a
report of deceptive memos, staff firings and a
negative outlook on UFOs by the project leaders.
Series of Tempests
The current UFO crisis is but one of a series of
tempests surrounding the oft-reported, but
scientifically undocumented, sightings of strange
saucer-like forms and shapes in flight.
Long under study by the Air Force in several
separate projects, UFOs have managed to move even the
studiously academic scientific community as well as
government into support ing an objective study. NICAP,
one of the less strident, but no-nonetheless dedicated
parties, claims it also wants a balanced, scientific
appraisal of the problem.
At its behest, and at that of others, the
government financed a $500,000 project to answer UFO
questions.
NICAP, which also challenged the earlier Air Force
probes, now terms that study the "Colorado Fiasco."
Message to Johnson
Maj. Keyhoe announced at yesterday's press
conference that he has also written President Johnson
apprising him of NICAP's views and asking a new study.
Before the session turned into a nose-to-nose
confrontation between Keyhoe and author Philip Klass
over Kiass' allegations that UFOs are a form of ball
lightning, Keyhoe read portions of a memo allegedly
from the project leader, Robert Low, to the university
of Colorado's vice president, Thurston Manning.
In it, Low is alleged to have said that to enter
such a study objectively, "one has to admit fhe
possibility that such things as UFOs exist. It is not
respectable to give serious consideration to such a
possibility."
Further, the memo continued:
"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..."
Maj. Keyhoe also charged that the investigating
staff of the project was made up chiefly of
psychologists whose goals were to examine the
credibility of the witnesses rather than their
purported evidence for sightings.
NICAP does not argue, he added, that either Low or
Condon was being dishonest. "Both seemed to believe
they were being correct in their approach," he said.
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