CSI Quarterly

History

Civilian Saucer Intelligence of Los Angeles published its Quarterly Bulletin from Box 1971, Main Post Office, Los Angeles 53, California, beginning in the fall of 1952. This was the West Coast counterpart to the better-known Civilian Saucer Intelligence of New York, and the two groups operated independently despite the shared name. The Los Angeles CSI was active during the peak of the 1952 sighting wave, when objects were reported over Washington D.C. and sightings poured in from across the country.

The organisation maintained an evaluation board of scientific and aeronautical experts headed by Dr. Walther Riedel, the German rocket engineer who had directed propulsion development for the V-2 rocket programme at Peenemünde during World War II and was brought to the United States under Operation Paperclip after the war. Riedel joined Wernher von Braun's team at Fort Bliss, Texas before transferring to North American Aviation. His name on the CSI-LA evaluation board in 1952 gave the group a level of technical credibility that few civilian groups could match, and is one of the documented instances of a Paperclip rocket engineer placing his name and expertise on a civilian saucer evaluation board in the early 1950s. The group collected sighting reports from "five or seven states in the union, from Canada, Great Britain, Africa, South America and many other places."

The bulletin's editorial stance was empirical and impatient with both official dismissals and contactee claims. The final issue noted pointedly that "just as long as brass curtains cut off from the public the findings of the various governmental investigations, and no other qualified agency is available to give part of the answers, these same people will continue to accept the irresponsible statements of those who would have us believe that the 'little men' have landed, or that there is a Venusian living in Pasadena." CSI-LA positioned itself between government secrecy and contactee credulity, finding both intolerable.

The bulletin offered a cash reward for "proof that saucers are from another world," a challenge that combined scientific seriousness with a showman's flair for publicity. It also solicited photographs, news clippings, and associate memberships from readers across the country.

A breakdown of the first 200 sighting reports received showed sightings were not concentrated around military installations (contradicting "a popular fallacy") and that green fireballs dated back into the early 1930s, predating the commonly cited 1947 beginning of the saucer era. CSI-LA's records showed continuity where official accounts saw novelty.