Robert Friend was a major when appointed the head of Blue Book in 1958. Friend made some attempts to reverse the direction Blue Book had taken since 1954. Jerome Clark writes that "Friend's efforts to upgrade the files and catalog sightings according to various observed statistics were frustrated by a lack of funding and assistance." Heartened by Friend's efforts, Hynek organized the first of several meetings between Blue Book staffers and ATIC personnel in 1959. Hynek suggested that some older UFO reports should be reevaluated, with the ostensible aim of moving them from the "unknown" to the "identified" category. Hynek's plans came to naught. During Friend's tenure, ATIC contemplated passing oversight Blue Book to another Air Force agency (Hynek also favored this) , but neither the Air Research and Development Center, nor the Office of Information for the Secretary of the Air Force was interested. In 1960, there were U.S. Congressional hearings regarding UFOs. Civilian UFO research group NICAP had publicly charged Blue Book with covering up UFO evidence, and had also acquired a few allies in the U.S. Congress. Blue Book was investigated by the Congress and the CIA, with critics—most notably the civilian UFO group NICAP_ asserting that Blue Book was lacking as a scientific study. In response, ATIC added personnel (increasing the total personnel to three military personnel, plus civilian secretaries) and increased Blue Book's budget. This seemed to mollify some of Blue Book's critics, but it was only temporary. A few years later the criticism would be even louder. By the time he was transferred from Blue Book in 1963, Friend thought that Blue Book was effectively useless and ought to be dissolved, even if it caused an outcry amongst the public. Fran Ridge: "In 1963, Friend (by then a Lt. Col., along with Sgt. Sharp and Captain Hector Quintinilla), showed up in southern Illinois during our investigation (Austin case, Aug 4; Uphoff-Hill case, Aug.7) we were conducting for NICAP." Team of Physicists "check light-in-sky stories here."
