The Robertson Panel
UFOs/Alien
ExpertBy
Billy Booth
Another
UFO study group was formed by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1952. This
group was called the Robertson Panel, and was primarily formed because of the
heavy amount of UFO sightings in and around the Washington D.C. area. The group was
informed of many military activities, and intelligence issues, therefore the
group was labeled "secret."
The Panel would determine that UFOs
could, for the most part, be easily explained by the misidentification of
everyday aerial objects. The group would also advocate a campaign to
"debunk" UFOs. Their desire was for the public to lose interest in
UFOs, and to be put bluntly, quit calling in reports.
Actually, the growing public interest in UFOs, and
incoming queries were having an impact on government facilities, and the
Robertson Panel desire was to quite this activity. According to some group
members, this public interest had reached "mass hysteria" levels, and
it was thought that our enemies, especially the Soviet Union, could capitalize
on the problem.
The group was under the leadership of
Howard Percy Robertson, who was physicist, and a CIA employee. The groups first
meeting was on January 14, 1953. The group members were:
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 group met for four days. They
studied film and went over various reports. Most of the group members were
skeptics, yet some very interesting conclusions were reached.
On day one, two classic UFO films were shown: one, the
1950 Montana film, and second, the 1952 Delbert Newhouse film, which was taken
in Utah. Two Navy film and photograph experts presented their conclusions: both
films depicted objects unidentifiable by any conventional means. Naturally,
this went against the status quo of the mindset of the majority of the group.
Also, Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt gave a summary of Air Force attempts
to study the UFO mystery.
On the second day of the meeting,
Ruppelt concluded his presentation, Dr. J. Allen Hynek discussed the Battelle
efforts, and the entire panel reviewed Air Force efforts at researching UFO
sightings.
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