Boggs, Aaron J.
(Jere) "Jere" Boggs was a Major in the USAF working in the
Pentagon in 1948-1950, when he played an important role
in the USAF Intelligence response to the early post-War
UFO phenomenon. Major Boggs worked on the "analysis"
side of the intelligence community rather than the
"collection" side, which initially had the job of
handling UFO reports. When the focus of looking at UFOs
shifted to Wright-Patterson AFB and Project SIGN, and
once the Pentagon began getting feedback from SIGN that
they felt that the UFO phenomenon was real and,
ultimately, that it might be extraterrestrial, Boggs got
assigned the job as the Pentagon focus point for what
was going on, and what, if anything, should be the USAF
response. Being on the "Defensive Air" side of Air Force
intelligence analysis, and this being a possible enemy
weapon and even a violation of US airspace, giving this
job to someone in "Defensive Air" probably made sense.
We should always remember, though, that all these
Pentagon offices could work together on any problem; the
location of their "desk" only fixes a "chain of
command". When the SIGN project began hinting at a
possible extraterrestrial "estimate" on UFOs, many in
the Pentagon apparently thought that was unwise (to put
it mildly), and Boggs was assigned (with consultancy
from US Naval intelligence) to write an opposing
estimate. [ AIR 100-203-79.]. When the SIGN
extraterrestrial estimate formally reached Director of
Intelligence General Charles Cabell's office, there was
a document to challenge it. This occasioned an actual
intelligence "shoot-out" of sorts between the two camps
held in November 1948 at the National Bureau of
Standards with Boggs defending his side against SIGN.
SIGN lost that battle, and the idea that the USAF would
proceed with the hypothesis that UFOs were
extraterrestrial never was the leading theory again (
This includes the "glory days" of 1952, when although
some persons in USAF intelligence thought that UFOs
might well be ET, the organization certainly did not
broadcast that as a primary hypothesis on any wider
scale, as it would have been within the military if the
SIGN estimate had prevailed ) . Post this meeting, it
was generally Boggs' job to write Pentagon responses to
things as they emerged in the now-negative Grudge era.
Keyhoe documents some of this in his Flying Saucers are
Real. Ultimately Boggs moved on and this desk became the
location of a much more UFO-friendly Dewey Fournet
[after brief occupancy by a station-keeper].
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