Dated: Aug. 18, 2020
SUBJECT: NEW TASK FORCE & OLD SHOOT'EM DOWN ORDERS IN 1952
To: Nicap Research & nicap A=Team
From: Fran Ridge:

Thanks, guys. I put it under /directives/  even though it really isn't such.
http://www.nicap.org/directives/DOD.Establishment.of.UAP.Task.Force.8.14.2020.pdf
with all the other directives that nobody (but us) knows about.
http://www.nicap.org/directives/ 
Now after 70+ years of potential threats, our new kids on the block in power think they have made a major discovery.  Now we can set up a Buck Rogers Hotshot  School and maybe (as  President Truman once did) issue a shootem down order. This time with new phasers, etc.  I seriously doubt we are a match for the "tic tacs" but maybe, if we are lucky, we can fragment an incoming asteroid.

Mike Swords:
I don't have the answer to this, but here are three marginal things:
1. In an INS news story of July 28, 1952, a Pentagon public information officer, Lt. Colonel Moncel Monts, is quoted as saying "The jet pilots are and have been under orders to investigate unidentified objects and to shoot them down if they can't talk them down."
2. In an interview with Roy Craig as part of Colorado's investigation, a Boeing engineer and radarman during the era (Jay Nogle) recalled multi-radars contacting UFOs and then the next morning their Battalion Commander inquired about it. He sent a report to the Pentagon and came back to the men saying that they were authorized to fire on the unidentifieds.
3. Much later (1956) the navy had a bunch of pilots getting together in Hawaii and (to the USAF's distress) invited a bunch of reporters to the affair.
The pilots talked freely about unidentifieds and that they had permission to shoot them down.
This brings up a dim bell ringing about some wannabee space rocket amateur from Chicago who ran a club (NOT the famous one). This guy heard of the shoot-em-down order and made a fairly big stink about it in the newspapers.

Brad Sparks:
I don't believe Truman ordered the shootdown of UFOs during Wash Nationals 1952.  It's a wild media rumor that suckered a lot of people back then who were told it wasn't true.  The ADC Rules of Engagement needed no Presidential authorization unless they were planning on shooting down an airliner.  Nothing ever flew over the White House for example.

======
Aug. 20, 2020, Rod Dyke:
Jets on 24 -Hour Alert To Shoot Down 'Saucers' 1952.07.28

Barry Greenwood:
Around 2006, Stan Friedman asked me to find reports of "shoot down" orders for the 1952 wave, for the coming book, "Shoot Them Down" by Frank Feschino. I found a flurry of clips on this but nothing about Truman ordering it.

Brad Sparks:
As Barry says, there is nothing about Truman ordering UFO shootdowns or anything at all in the July 1952 Wash National period (or any other time). The INS story gives a hearsay reporter-rendition of an AF spokesman Lt Col Monts saying that there "are" and "have been" [orders]
to investigate UFOs and if they do not cooperate to shoot them down, in other words a loose rendering of standard ADC Rules of Engagement, no special "shootdown" orders. What it looks like to me from reading the news stories is that the AF issued a 24/7 national alert for UFOs and when a reporter asked if that included shooting them down, then someone in the AF replied that if the UFO was hostile or didn't cooperate then jet pilots can shoot them down -- ADC Rules of Engagement basically. Mike is right that among these "marginal" items there was an amateur named Farnsworth with his little US Rocket Society club who jumped into the fray on this, sent telegrams to the President, SecDef, etc., pleading with them not to do anything unfriendly to "extra-terrestrials" to "alienate" them (unclear if he was unaware of his own pun), and grabbed publicity interviews on tv, etc.  (See Loren Gross History July 21-31, 1952, Supp. Notes.) No AF documents on any of this.

Mike Swords:
I wouldn't be surprised if there is a "human imperfection" element in here too. I could easily imagine Lt. Colonel Monts feeling the pressures of a rather odd moment and the consequent stress applied on him by the press, and blurting out the "standard" reply in a tone which led the reporters in a slightly wrong direction. The reporters then hear what they want to hear and our public story gets colored by another imperfect lens. I actually believe that such things happen all the time. It's a version of the secretly-pass-a-message-around-a-room party trick, whereupon the final message is far off the original. We in UFOlogy tend to be far too trusting about tiny details that we hear or are on paper. That malleability of small details of things which can be dependent upon "tone" is the reason that I depend so much more upon gross details from Close Encounters which are less likely to blur. Anyway, I see no great mystery in a military thinking it's OK to shoot at unidentified potentially hostile aero-technology violating sensitive airspace (as long as the missiles aren't likely to hit any civilians when we miss.) I assume that ADC or whoever felt that way all along.