The Robertson Panel Report
The report of the scientific panel the CIA convened to review the Air Force's best UFO evidence. Its recommendations, public debunking and the monitoring of civilian UFO groups, shaped United States government policy on the subject for the next two decades.
From 14 to 17 January 1953 the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence convened a panel of physicists and engineers under H. P. Robertson of the California Institute of Technology. Members included the physicist Luis Alvarez, the radar specialist Lloyd Berkner, the geophysicist Samuel Goudsmit, and the astronomer Thornton Page. J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force's scientific consultant, attended.
The panel reviewed the strongest cases the Air Force held, including the Tremonton and Great Falls films, and concluded that the reports posed no direct physical threat but that the volume of them was itself a danger to the orderly functioning of air defence. Its recommendations were to strip UFO reports of their special status through a programme of public education and debunking, and to keep watch on civilian UFO organisations. The full text below is the declassified report.
Source: CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence, declassified. Public domain (US Government work).
