Here is what Captain Ed. Ruppelt had written in his original
manuscript, followed by what actually went into the book, "The Report
on Unidentified Flying Objects". This is then followed by an analysis
by Brad Sparks.
The Manuscript version:
"While the people working on Project Sign were pondering over Lt.
Gorman's "duel of death," before they found out that his advisary was a
lighted weather
balloon, two things were taking place. One, the higher The Estimate
of the Situation went in the Air Force
chain of command the cooler the reception it got, and two, reports of
radar picking up UFO's began to come in. How
far this estimate got is something that I could never
determine, but it got up into the high
eschelons of the Air Force before it was batted back down. The
reason for batting it down was that the conclusions,
interplanetary vehicles, lacked proof. A group from ATIC went to the
Pentagon to sell the idea to the late
General Hoyt S. Vandenburg, then Chief of Staff of the Air Force, but
had no luck. The evidence didn't
impress him enough to make him decide to buy the interplanetary theory."
Released version:
"While the people on Project Sign were pondering over Lt, Gorman's
"dogfight" with the UFO--at the time they weren't even considering the
balloon angle--the TOP
SECRET Estimate of the Situation was working its way up into the
higher eschelons of the Air Force. It
got to the late Hoyt S. Vandenburg, then Chief of Staff, before it was
batted back down, The General
wouldn't buy interplanetary vehicles. The report lacked proof. A group
from ATIC went to the Pentagon to bolster
their position but had no luck, the Chief of'Staff just couldn't be
convinced."
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I already addressed that in my EOTS analysis. You can see
Ruppelt originally wrote in the unpublished deleted portions of his
book manuscript that: "How far this estimate got is something
that I could never determine."
The distinction must be made between the WRITTEN DOCUMENT versus
an ORAL PRESENTATION. Apparently the EOTS got rejected at "high
echelons" of the Air Staff before ever reaching Vandenberg (no "u" in
his name). Vandenberg got an appeal of the rejection from a
"group from ATIC" in Oct 1948 but denied the appeal. His denial
may have had nothing to do with the contents of the EOTS which he may
never even have seen, but simply AF office politics where it was easier
for him to avoid the controversial issue by a pocket veto of letting
the lower official's rejection stand and refusing to change that
official's decision. In my reconstruction of events that original
denial was by Maj Gen Laurence Craigie in late Aug 1948. Craigie
had become anti-UFO and in later years was vehemently a debunker.
A new draft of the EOTS with more backup documentation was
prepared after Craigie was replaced by Maj Gen Donald Putt in Sept
1948. AMC Intelligence evidently thought it could get another
shot with Craigie's successor Putt who was indeed more reasonable but
evidently unwilling to buck Craigie's original decision to reject the
EOTS.
The "higher" up in the AF chain of command "the cooler the
reception" it got. That means no one signed it as approving or
endorsing it. The only way it could go "higher" above the
Craigie-Putt level, Director of R&D, was if they authorized it to
be seen above their heads. AMC could not just go around them, as
that would have been a potential court-martial offense of breaking
chain of command after a decision had been made. Presumably Putt
told AMC they could go over his head, he would at least give them a
fighting chance to argue their case. And that's when I believe
they may have made an oral presentation or had an in-person meeting
with Vandenberg, without Vandenberg necessarily ever seeing the EOTS.
That would explain why Ruppelt was never able to determine how
high the EOTS paper document had gone, but still thought Vandenberg had
been involved in some way with its ultimate rejection. You have
to look carefully at Ruppelt's words here about the "group from ATIC"
going to the Pentagon to "bolster their case" not bolster or push
through their paper document ("ATIC" of course didn't exist yet, this
means AMC Intell Dept until ATIC was created in May 1951). Their
"case" was for ETH. Maybe they showed Vandenberg the EOTS
document but as a very busy man he could hardly have read it, hundreds
of pages' worth, while sitting at this meeting. Maybe the AMC
group didn't even show him the EOTS at all but simply argued their case
and Vandenberg wouldn't buy it (which is what I think happened).
Maybe it never actually got as far as a meeting with Vandenberg but
with some deputy or with his vice chief of staff.