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Orbit: CRIFO Newsletter

CRIFO, Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects

United States (Ohio)
Country
1954 to 1957
Published
3
Issues Indexed
345
Articles Catalogued

History

Leonard H. Stringfield founded CRIFO (Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects) in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1953, making it one of the earliest organised civilian UFO research groups in the United States. Its newsletter, Orbit, launched in 1954 and published regularly through 1957 across three volumes. At its peak, Orbit had a circulation of over 2,500 subscribers, remarkable for a grassroots UFO publication in the mid-1950s. Stringfield claimed it was the largest civilian UFO research group in the world at the time.

Stringfield was a methodical man. During World War II, he had served in the U.S. Army's Fifth Air Force intelligence section in the Pacific theatre, an experience that shaped both his investigative discipline and his later willingness to take military witnesses seriously. After the war, he settled in Cincinnati and began collecting sighting reports with the same systematic approach he had applied to intelligence work. CRIFO grew out of this personal research programme.

Stringfield maintained direct communication channels with military and civilian pilots who reported sightings, publishing detailed case reports that the Air Force's own Project Blue Book often downplayed or omitted. NHI Archive editorial assessment

Orbit reflected its founder's temperament: serious, detailed, focused on documentation over speculation. Each issue carried case reports with full witness identification, precise dates and locations, physical descriptions of the objects, and whatever corroborating evidence could be assembled. Stringfield maintained direct communication channels with military and civilian pilots, and the newsletter published their testimony when official channels would not.

The newsletter also tracked the evolving government position on UFOs, from Project Blue Book's public statements to the congressional inquiries that Stringfield followed closely. His editorial tone was measured but persistent: the evidence warranted official investigation, the Air Force was not conducting one honestly, and the public had a right to know.

From Orbit to Crash Retrievals
Stringfield later became best known for his pioneering research into UFO crash retrievals. Beginning in 1978, he published a series of "Status Reports" compiling testimony from military and intelligence sources who claimed firsthand knowledge of recovered craft and non-human bodies. This work, which made him one of the most cited (and most attacked) figures in ufology, built directly on the network of military contacts he developed during the CRIFO years. The witnesses who trusted him in the 1970s and 1980s did so because he had established his credibility two decades earlier through Orbit.

CRIFO and Orbit wound down in 1957 as Stringfield shifted his attention to other projects. The newsletter's short run belies its outsized influence: it demonstrated that civilian researchers could maintain professional standards, attract serious witnesses, and document cases that the official record was ignoring.

From the Archive
See Leonard Stringfield for the full career profile. Cross-reference with NICAP UFO Investigator and APRO Bulletin for the other major civilian organisations operating during Orbit's publication period, and the PURSUE Release 02 page for the Sandia 1948 to 1950 file that documents La Paz on the government side of the same investigation.

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