670612_saunders

In case you don't have access to the book (although it's well worth the dollar or two that it costs in second hand bookstores in the USA), I'll type up the relevant couple of pages below.

(1) The meeting was attended by USAF Captain C H Van Diver. An extract from a relevant Trip Report by Captain Diver appears, and is discussed, by Brad Steiger on 5 pages of his "Project Blue Book" (1976) at pages 327-331 (forming part of Chapter 13) of the Ballantine Books paperback edition.

The relevant extract of "UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon committee went wrong", by David R Saunders and R Roger Harkins, at pages 125-126 (in Chapter 11) of the Signet paperback edition is as follows:

"One can only surmise that the Air Force is not of one mind in its official handling of UFOs. This was never more apparent than in Boulder on June 12-13, 1967, when the Project played host to as many of the Air Force officers having the UFO responsibility at various bases as could be collected in one place at one time. Despite the very poor timing of this meeting, near the end of the fiscal year in which travel funds for such things had already been spent by many bases, we had a better than 50 percent turnout.

"While the UFO officers were here, we tried to get across the idea that they had an important assignment, even though for each of them it was an extra duty on top of some other full-time job. We tried to bring them in on what we were attempting to do, and maybe even get them a little excited about it. We spent considerable time reviewing with them our criteria for interesting sightings, which had just been formulated for the Early Warning Network, in hopes that some of them would pick up the phone when the right time came. Also, mindful of the Air Force's reputation in the handling of witnesses, we tried to review with them how it should be done.

"We also got our ears filled with the other side of the matter, namely, that it was no fun to be called out at all hours of the day and night just to chase wild geese, which is what much of the job amounts to.

"One can always wonder how much of such a two-day cram course gets through. Our audience was a widely assorted lot - ranging all the way from buck sergeants to bird colonels, whose main duties included everything from the chaplaincy to flying. It helped, though, to establish in the minds of these particular men that we had a job to do, too, and that we were taking it more seriously than some of them expected. Of course, the typical UFO officer holds this assignment for only a year or two, and while some of us and some of them thought it a nice idea, there was no possibility of making the conference an annual affair; instead, we eventually wrote up a summary of the proceedings that could serve as a guide for future UFO officers, and copies of this were distributed in December of 1967.

"Having been responsible for the biggest segment of the UFO officers' briefing, I know we did not do a really inspiring job. I would have forgotten the whole thing but for two cases that came to my attention at that time; each, in its way, illustrated the need for such a meeting." [Details of the relevant cases are then given.]