Joel Was Right
If you smell burning, it's probably the generators acting up. Report it anyway.
Part One - the following is a segment from Leslie Kean's book.
During the early years when reports of unknown aerial phenomena increased to the point that the military became involved, a project was set up within the Air Materiel Command as a result, and given the code name Sign.[1] The new agency began its operations in early 1948 at Wright Field (now called Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) with the mandate to collect information, evaluate it, and assess whether the phenomenon was a threat to national security. According to air force personnel and others involved with the study, among them Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Project Sign became more convinced that the objects were not Russian, and that divisions grew between those who thought they were interplanetarythe term used at the time, when much less was known about our solar systemand those who were determined to find a more conventional explanation. Later that year, he claims, some Project Sign staff wrote a top-secret report, an Estimate of the Situation, providing data on convincing cases and concluding that, based on the evidence, UFOs were most likely extraterrestrial. The document eventually landed on the desk of General Hoyt Vanderbeng, Air Force Chief of Staff, who rejected it as unacceptable because he wanted proof, and responded by returning it to its authors at Project Sign. From then on, the proponents of the extraterrestrial hypothesis lost ground, and because of the clear message from Vandenberg and others, the safer position that UFOs must have conventional explanations was adopted by the majority of the projects investigators. It appears they were under pressure to shift their focus. The Estimate of the Situation was reportedly destroyed, and no copies have ever been found despite repeated attempts using the Freedom of Information Act. In response to this claim, the USAF denied the memo had ever existed. There has been no evidence to counter this other than the testimonies of those involved with Sign.[2]
Project Sign was later renamed Project Grudge, which then became the well-known Project Blue Book in 1951, lasting for nineteen years. As time passed, it continued to become increasingly clear that some of these objects did not belong to any foreign government, and we had to face the clear possibility that they did not originate here on Earth. U.S. government documents released through the FOIA show that, as a result, some officials from multiple branches of government continued to assert that they might be interplanetary indeed they refused to rule out this possibility. As before, other factions stuck to their hope of finding a conventional explanation, regardless. In July 1952, the FBI was briefed through the office of Major General John Samford, the director of intelligence for the Air Force, and told that it was not entirely impossible that the objects sighted may possibly be ships from another planet such as Mars. Air intelligence was fairly certain that they were not ships or missiles from another nation in this world, the FBI memo reports. Another FBI memo stated some months later that some military officials are seriously considering the possibility of planetary ships.[3] At the same time, national defence concerns were mounting about the preponderance of technologically advanced unidentified objects flying over the United States during the Cold War. One famous series of sightings over the nations capitol, in which Air Force planes were sent to intercept brilliant objects picked up by ground radar, made national headlines in July 1952, and necessitated a press conference, the biggest one since World War II, in which intelligence chief General Samford tried to calm the country. He said:
Air Force interest in the problem has been due to our feeling of an obligation to identify and analyze, to the best of our ability, anything in the air that has the possibility of [being] a threat or menace to the United States. In pursuit of this obligation, since 1947, we have received and analyzed between one and two thousand reports that have come to us from all kinds of sources. Of this great mass of reports, we have been able adequately to explain the great bulk of themexplain them to our own satisfaction. However, there are then a certain percentage of this volume of reports that have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things. It is this group of observations that we now are attempting to resolve. We have, as of date, come to only one firm conclusion with respect to this remaining percentage. And that is that it does not contain any pattern of purpose or of consistency that we can relate to any conceivable threat to the United States.
He told reporters that the Washington, D.C., events were likely mere aberrations caused by temperature inversionslayers in the atmosphere in which rising temperatures affect radar performancean interpretation contracted by the pilots and even radar operators involved. The increasing numbers of reports were becoming hard to manage along with growing public interest in the phenomenon. In late 1952, H. Marshall Chadwell, assistant director of scientific intelligence for the CIA, sent a memo about this problem to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and travelling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles, he stated.
In another 1952 memo, titled Flying Saucers, the CIAs Chadwell said the DCI must be empowered to initiate the research necessary to solve the problem of instant positive identification of unidentified flying objects. The CIA recognized the need for a national policy as to what should be told the public regarding the phenomenon, in order to minimize risk of panic, [5]according to government documents. It was therefore decided that the DCI would enlist the services of selected scientists to review and appraise the available evidence.[6] As a result of this decision, the CIA arranged a critically important meeting that would forever change both the course of media coverage and the official attitude toward the UFO subject. The results of this meeting help explain the omnipresent disengagement of American officials during the decades to come, according to some investigators and proponents of the UFO subject.
The CIA began its work in January 1953, when it convened a hand-picked scientific advisory panel, chaired by H. P. Robertson, a specialist in physics and weapons systems from the California Institute of Technology, for a four-day closed-door session. Authorities were concerned that communication channels were being so saturated by hundreds of UFO reports that they were becoming dangerously clogged. Even though the UFOs had demonstrated no threat to national security, false alarms could be dangerous and defence agencies might have a problem discerning true hostile intent. Officials were concerned that the Soviets might take advantage of this situation by simulating or staging a UFO wave, and then attack. Ironically, the CIA would in future decades encourage the perpetuation of the UFO subject to the public to mask classified surveillance crafts such as the U2 plane.
During the early years when reports of unknown aerial phenomena increased to the point that the military became involved, a project was set up within the Air Materiel Command as a result, and given the code name Sign.[1] The new agency began its operations in early 1948 at Wright Field (now called Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) with the mandate to collect information, evaluate it, and assess whether the phenomenon was a threat to national security. According to air force personnel and others involved with the study, among them Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Project Sign became more convinced that the objects were not Russian, and that divisions grew between those who thought they were interplanetarythe term used at the time, when much less was known about our solar systemand those who were determined to find a more conventional explanation. Later that year, he claims, some Project Sign staff wrote a top-secret report, an Estimate of the Situation, providing data on convincing cases and concluding that, based on the evidence, UFOs were most likely extraterrestrial. The document eventually landed on the desk of General Hoyt Vanderbeng, Air Force Chief of Staff, who rejected it as unacceptable because he wanted proof, and responded by returning it to its authors at Project Sign. From then on, the proponents of the extraterrestrial hypothesis lost ground, and because of the clear message from Vandenberg and others, the safer position that UFOs must have conventional explanations was adopted by the majority of the projects investigators. It appears they were under pressure to shift their focus. The Estimate of the Situation was reportedly destroyed, and no copies have ever been found despite repeated attempts using the Freedom of Information Act. In response to this claim, the USAF denied the memo had ever existed. There has been no evidence to counter this other than the testimonies of those involved with Sign.[2]
Project Sign was later renamed Project Grudge, which then became the well-known Project Blue Book in 1951, lasting for nineteen years. As time passed, it continued to become increasingly clear that some of these objects did not belong to any foreign government, and we had to face the clear possibility that they did not originate here on Earth. U.S. government documents released through the FOIA show that, as a result, some officials from multiple branches of government continued to assert that they might be interplanetary indeed they refused to rule out this possibility. As before, other factions stuck to their hope of finding a conventional explanation, regardless. In July 1952, the FBI was briefed through the office of Major General John Samford, the director of intelligence for the Air Force, and told that it was not entirely impossible that the objects sighted may possibly be ships from another planet such as Mars. Air intelligence was fairly certain that they were not ships or missiles from another nation in this world, the FBI memo reports. Another FBI memo stated some months later that some military officials are seriously considering the possibility of planetary ships.[3] At the same time, national defence concerns were mounting about the preponderance of technologically advanced unidentified objects flying over the United States during the Cold War. One famous series of sightings over the nations capitol, in which Air Force planes were sent to intercept brilliant objects picked up by ground radar, made national headlines in July 1952, and necessitated a press conference, the biggest one since World War II, in which intelligence chief General Samford tried to calm the country. He said:
Air Force interest in the problem has been due to our feeling of an obligation to identify and analyze, to the best of our ability, anything in the air that has the possibility of [being] a threat or menace to the United States. In pursuit of this obligation, since 1947, we have received and analyzed between one and two thousand reports that have come to us from all kinds of sources. Of this great mass of reports, we have been able adequately to explain the great bulk of themexplain them to our own satisfaction. However, there are then a certain percentage of this volume of reports that have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things. It is this group of observations that we now are attempting to resolve. We have, as of date, come to only one firm conclusion with respect to this remaining percentage. And that is that it does not contain any pattern of purpose or of consistency that we can relate to any conceivable threat to the United States.
He told reporters that the Washington, D.C., events were likely mere aberrations caused by temperature inversionslayers in the atmosphere in which rising temperatures affect radar performancean interpretation contracted by the pilots and even radar operators involved. The increasing numbers of reports were becoming hard to manage along with growing public interest in the phenomenon. In late 1952, H. Marshall Chadwell, assistant director of scientific intelligence for the CIA, sent a memo about this problem to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and travelling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles, he stated.
In another 1952 memo, titled Flying Saucers, the CIAs Chadwell said the DCI must be empowered to initiate the research necessary to solve the problem of instant positive identification of unidentified flying objects. The CIA recognized the need for a national policy as to what should be told the public regarding the phenomenon, in order to minimize risk of panic, [5]according to government documents. It was therefore decided that the DCI would enlist the services of selected scientists to review and appraise the available evidence.[6] As a result of this decision, the CIA arranged a critically important meeting that would forever change both the course of media coverage and the official attitude toward the UFO subject. The results of this meeting help explain the omnipresent disengagement of American officials during the decades to come, according to some investigators and proponents of the UFO subject.
The CIA began its work in January 1953, when it convened a hand-picked scientific advisory panel, chaired by H. P. Robertson, a specialist in physics and weapons systems from the California Institute of Technology, for a four-day closed-door session. Authorities were concerned that communication channels were being so saturated by hundreds of UFO reports that they were becoming dangerously clogged. Even though the UFOs had demonstrated no threat to national security, false alarms could be dangerous and defence agencies might have a problem discerning true hostile intent. Officials were concerned that the Soviets might take advantage of this situation by simulating or staging a UFO wave, and then attack. Ironically, the CIA would in future decades encourage the perpetuation of the UFO subject to the public to mask classified surveillance crafts such as the U2 plane.
