Both the CIA and the U.S. Air Force were extremely concerned about the intrusion of UFOs into the airspace above Washington National Airport. Both organizations did not rule out the possibility that all the strange sightings could be coming from some enemy country that was deliberately trying to cause panic in order to launch a covert attack.
To the director of the CIA, Walter B. Smith, received a memorandum from the Office of Scientific Intelligence on September 24, 1952, which resulted in the creation of a scientific committee in December under the leadership of Howard P. Robertson. The committee held its first meeting in January 1953.
Robertson's group
Physicist Howard P. Robertson and other prominent scientists spent four days reviewing the most prominent UFO sighting reports that had been collected by Project Blue Book. The panel rejected nearly all of the cases reviewed, deeming them not a threat to national security. Robertson's group recommended that the intelligence community reduce public interest in UFOs and educate people about them, minimizing new reports. It was decided to put civilian groups and UFO activists under surveillance.
Robertson's group was briefed on U.S. intelligence and military activities, and their report was immediately classified and attached to an internal report by the group's secretary, F.C. Durant, who was a CIA officer. U.S. intelligence analysts noted that what was happening in Washington in July 1952 was not covered in the Soviet press.
The U.S. Air Force formed several civilian groups to keep an eye on the subject, specifically any attempts by the Soviet Union to capitalize on events in the United States for psychological warfare and "American gullibility."
Another danger seemed even more real to the CIA. The entire airborne warning system had always depended on a combination of visual surveillance and radar scanning. If Russia were given the opportunity to launch an air strike and a dozen unidentified sightings were detected, whether they turned out to be enemy plots, optical illusions, or extraterrestrial aircraft, how could the moment of attack be distinguished between real weapons and phantoms?
The CIA's concerns
CIA analysts concluded that something was happening that required the most careful and immediate attention. Since incredible reports had been received from credible observers and background radiation levels were inexplicably increasing during UFO sightings, the movements of unidentified objects at high speeds and high altitudes over major U.S. defense installations could not be attributed to known types of aircraft or natural phenomena.
Team leader Robertson assembled the panel members for an informal meeting in a closed, unauthorized session and announced that the CIA was recommending that they do their work in a way that would reduce public concern and explain the UFO reports as normal phenomena.
Robertson's panel included: radar expert, physicist Luis Alvarez; missile expert, secretary of the commission, CIA officer Frederick C. Durant; nuclear physicist Samuel Abraham Goudsmit; radar expert, astrophysicist Thornton Lee Page; and physicist Lloyd Berkner. While not a full member, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, a Blue Book consultant, also attended the panel.
At official meetings, Robertson's group reviewed movies taken by Navy officers, concluding that the objects observed were not any weather phenomena or known aircraft.
One of these meetings was attended by Air Force Major Dewey J. Fournet, who had been coordinating UFO cases for the Pentagon for over a year. He supported Robertson's extraterrestrial hypothesis, believing it to be the best explanation for some reports of unidentified objects.
The Director of Intelligence of the U.S. Air Force was provided with a copy of a rough draft of the Robertson team's report, and the Director's reaction was favorable. The team then made the following conclusions: the objects posed no threat to national security, but no evidence of the objects' space origin was found.
After reviewing the UFO footage with representatives of the U.S. Navy Photo Interpretation Laboratory, the committee determined that the objects were not balloons, airplanes or birds, nor were they reflections, optical illusions or plays of light.
The group concluded that better staff training and a public education campaign were needed to reduce interest in flying saucers. It was also noted that the seeming lack of propaganda by the Soviet Union might indicate a possible special tactic of Russian policy. In December 1953, an Air Force regulation was issued fining military personnel and certain civilians for unauthorized publication of UFO information.
A consultant to Robertson's group, astronomer and ufologist J. Allen Hynek in 1958 spearheaded the National Committee for the Investigation of Aerial Phenomena's demand that the Air Force publish the commission's report. The Air Force wrote three brief paragraphs and gave the names of the panel members. It wasn't until 1966 that a nearly complete version of the report was printed in the Saturday Review's science column.
For ufologists, Hynek was an authority, so everyone supported his claim that the Robertson Panel had disrespected the
UFO topic, and because of this, not enough attention had been paid to the subject for nearly 20 years, let alone determining the nature of the UFO phenomenon. In contrast, the Robertson panel report had a calming effect on the U.S. government, greatly reducing tensions in the intelligence and military communities.