e story of UFO's has emerged only on rare occasions. The general
public, for its interest in UFO's, has been paid off in misinformation.
Many civilian groups must have sensed this, for while I was chief of
Project Blue Book I had dozens of requests to speak on the subject of
UFO's. These civilian requests had to be turned down because of
security regulations.
I did give many official briefings, however, behind closed doors, to
certain groups associated with the government--all of them upon
request.
The subject of UFO's was added to a regular series of intelligence
briefings given to students at the Air Force's Command and Staff
School, and to classes at the Air Force's Intelligence School.
I gave briefings to the technical staff at the Atomic Energy
Commission's Los Alamos laboratory, where the first atomic bomb was
built. The theater where this briefing took place wouldn't hold all
of the people who tried to get in, so the briefing was recorded and
replayed many times. The same thing happened at AEC's Sandia Base,
near Albuquerque.
Many groups in the Pentagon and the Office of Naval Research
requested UFO briefings. Civilian groups, made up of some of the
nation's top scientists and industrialists, and formed to study
special military problems, worked in a UFO briefing. Top Air Force
commanders were given periodic briefings.
Every briefing I gave was followed by a discussion that lasted
anywhere from one to four hours.
In addition to these, Project Blue Book published a classified
monthly report on UFO activity. Requests to be put on distribution
for this report were so numerous that the distribution had to be
restricted to major Air Force Command Headquarters.
This interest was not caused by any revolutionary information that
was revealed in the briefings or reports. It stemmed only from a
desire to get the facts about an interesting subject.
Many aspects of the UFO problem were covered in these official
briefings. I would give details of many of the better reports we
received, our conclusions about them, and how those conclusions were
reached. If we had identified a UFO, the audience was told how the
identification was made. If we concluded that the answer to a UFO
sighting was "Unknown," the audience learned why we were convinced it
was unknown.
Among the better sightings that were described fully to interested
government groups were: the complete story of the Lubbock Lights,
including the po
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