By Francis L. Ridge, 24 March 2006
(NICAP.org)
Quote from the report:
“The Robertson Panel first met formally on January 14,
1953 under the direction of Howard Percy Robertson. He was a physicist, a CIA
employee and director of the Defense Department Weapons Evaluation Group.
Other panel members were respected scientists and
military personnel who had worked on other classified military projects or
studies. All were then skeptical of UFO reports, though to varying degrees:
Louis Alvarez, physicist (and later, a Nobel Prize
winner)
Frederick C. Durant, missile expert
Samuel A. Goudsmit, Brookhaven National Laboratories
physicist
Thornton Page, astrophysicist, deputy director of
Johns Hopkins Operations Research Office.
Lloyd Berkner, physicist and J. Allen Hynek,
astronomer, were associate panel members.
The Robertson Panel’s official report concluded that
90 percent of UFO sightings could be readily identified with meteorological,
astronomical, or natural phenomena, and that the remaining 10 percent of UFO
reports could, in all likelyhood, be similarly explained with detailed study.
It was suggested that witnesses had misidentified bright stars and planets,
meteors, auroras, mirages, atmospheric temperature inversions, and lenticular
clouds; other sightings were judged as likely misinterpretation of conventional
aircraft, weather balloons, birds, searchlights, kites, and other phenomena.
Furthermore, the Panel suggested the Air Force should
begin a ‘debunking’ effort to reduce ‘public gullibility’ and demystify UFO
reports. The panel suggested a public relations campaign, using psychiatrists,
astronomers and assorted celebrities to significantly reduce public interest in
UFOs. It was also recommended that the mass media be used for the debunking,
including influential media giants like Walt Disney Corporation.
Their formal recommendation stated ‘That the national
security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects
of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have
unfortunately acquired.’ ”
Related posts:
(NICAP.org image)
