Levine, Dr. Norman
Dr. Norman Levine was a brand new PhD in electrical
engineering from the University of Arizona when the
Colorado contract from the Air Force was announced.
Somehow he found out about this, and taking an
enormous risk with his career, he not only volunteered
to serve on the team, but moved to Boulder to be on
site. Why he did this is not really known, but he was
very interested in the phenomenon from the day he
began work on the project. In many ways Levine was a
great help: he added some real technical expertise to
the staff (including someone who could comment
intelligently on radar cases), he added energy of
youth (willing to go out on several field trips), and
he gave David Saunders an ally in support of taking
UFO cases seriously, including the older ones. Had
Levine been a more senior man, he might have provided
the leadership that David Saunders could not find in
his own personality. Levine was fired by Ed Condon on
the same day as was Saunders, thus depriving the final
report of two of the four most involved team members.
Bob Low was also removed quietly, so three of the four
were gone (Craig was the fourth highly involved member
on site). Levine, even with the carved down version of
the report that Condon and Low envisioned late in
1967, was set to write two chapters: an assessment of
the plasma theory, which the whole project, including
Low, rejected as a minor marginal concept, and the
vitally important radar cases analyses chapter. With
his dismissal by Condon, both of these were lost.
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