Public
USAF UFO studies were first initiated under Project Sign
at the end of 1947, following many widely publicized UFO
reports (see Kenneth
Arnold). Project Sign was initiated specifically
at the request of General
Nathan Twining, chief of the Air Force Materiel
Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Wright-Patterson
was also to be the home of Project Sign and all subsequent
official USAF public investigations.
Sign
was officially inconclusive regarding the cause of the
sightings. However, according to US Air Force Captain
Edward J. Ruppelt (the first director of
Project Blue Book), Sign's initial intelligence estimate
(the so-called Estimate of the Situation) written in the
late summer of 1948, concluded that the flying saucers
were real craft, were not made by either the Soviet Union
or United States, and were likely extraterrestrial in
origin. This estimate was forwarded to the Pentagon, but
subsequently ordered destroyed by Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg,
USAF Chief of Staff, citing a lack of physical proof.
Vandenberg subsequently dismantled Project Sign.
Project
Sign was succeeded at the end of 1948 by Project Grudge,
which was criticized as having a debunking mandate. Ruppelt
referred to the era of Project Grudge as the "dark
ages" of early USAF UFO investigation. Grudge concluded
that all UFOs were natural phenomena or other misinterpretations,
although it also stated that 23 percent of the reports
could not be explained.
Captain
Ruppelt era
According
to Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, by the end of 1951, several
high-ranking, very influential USAF generals were so dissatisfied
with the state of Air Force UFO investigations that they
dismantled Project Grudge and replaced it with Project
Blue Book in March 1952. One of these men was Gen.
Charles P. Cabell. Another important change came when
General William Garland joined Cabell's staff; Garland
thought the UFO question deserved serious scrutiny because
he had witnessed a UFO.
The
new name, Project Blue Book, was selected to refer to
the blue booklets used for testing at some colleges and
universities. The name was inspired, said Ruppelt, by
the close attention that high-ranking officers were giving
the new project; it felt as if the study of UFOs was as
important as a college final exam. Blue Book was also
upgraded in status from Project Grudge, with the creation
of the Aerial Phenomenon Branch.
Ruppelt
was the first head of the project. He was an experienced
airman, having been decorated for his efforts with the
Army Air Corps during World War II, and having afterward
earned an aeronautics degree. He officially coined the
term "Unidentified Flying Object", to
replace the many terms ("flying saucer", "flying
disk" and so on) the military had previously used;
Ruppelt thought that "unidentified flying object"
was a more neutral and accurate term. Ruppelt resigned
from the Air Force some years later, and wrote the book
The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects,
which described the study of UFOs by United States Air
Force from 1947 to 1955. American scientist Michael
D. Swords wrote that "Ruppelt would
lead the last genuine effort to analyze UFOs".
Ruppelt
implemented a number of changes: He streamlined the manner
in which UFOs were reported to (and by) military officials,
partly in hopes of alleviating the stigma and ridicule
associated with UFO witnesses. Ruppelt also ordered the
development of a standard questionnaire for UFO witnesses,
hoping to uncover data which could be subject to statistical
analysis. He commissioned the Battelle Memorial Institute
to create the questionnaire and computerize the data.
Using case reports and the computerized data, Battelle
then conducted a massive scientific and statistical study
of all Air Force UFO cases, completed in 1954 and known
as "Project
Blue Book Special Report No. 14".
Knowing
that factionalism had harmed the progress of Project Sign,
Ruppelt did his best to avoid the kinds of open-ended
speculation that had led to Sign's personnel being split
among advocates and critics of the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
As Michael Hall writes, "Ruppelt not only took the
job seriously but expected his staff to do so as well.
If anyone under him either became too skeptical or too
convinced of one particular theory, they soon found themselves
off the project." In his book, Ruppelt reported that
he fired three personnel very early in the project because
they were either "too pro" or "too con"
one hypothesis or another. Ruppelt sought the advice of
many scientists and experts, and issued regular press
releases (along with classified monthly reports for military
intelligence).
Each
U.S. Air Force Base had a Blue Book officer to collect
UFO reports and forward them to Ruppelt. During most of
Ruppelt's tenure, he and his team were authorized to interview
any and all military personnel who witnessed UFOs, and
were not required to follow the chain of command. This
unprecedented authority underlined the seriousness of
Blue Book's investigation.
Under
Ruppelt's direction, Blue Book investigated a number of
well-known UFO cases, including the so-called Lubbock
Lights, and a widely publicized 1952 radar/visual case
over Washington D.C.. According to Jacques Vallee, Ruppelt
started the trend, largely followed by later Blue Book
investigations, of not giving serious consideration to
numerous reports of UFO landings and/or interaction with
purported UFO occupants.
Astronomer
Dr.
J. Allen Hynek was the scientific consultant
of the project, as he had been with Projects Sign and
Grudge. He worked for the project up to its termination
and initially created the categorization which has been
extended and is known today as Close Encounters.
He was a pronounced skeptic when he started, but said
that his feelings changed to a more wavering skepticism
during the research, after encountering a minority of
UFO reports he thought were unexplainable.
Ruppelt
left Blue Book in February 1953 for a temporary reassignment.
He returned a few months later to find his staff reduced
from more than ten, to two subordinates. Frustrated, Ruppelt
suggested that an Air Defense Command unit (the 4602nd
Air Intelligence Service Squadron) be charged with UFO
investigations.
Robertson
Panel
In
July 1952, after a build-up of hundreds of sightings over
the previous few months, a series of radar detections
coincident with visual sightings were observed near the
National Airport in Washington, D.C. (see 1952
Washington D.C. UFO incident). Future Arizona
Senator and 2008 presidential nominee, the late, John
McCain is alleged to be one of these witnesses.
After
much publicity, these sightings led the Central Intelligence
Agency to establish a panel of scientists headed by Dr.
H. P. Robertson, a physicist of the California Institute
of Technology, which included various physicists, meteorologists,
and engineers, and one astronomer (Hynek). The Robertson
Panel first met on January 14, 1953 in order to formulate
a response to the overwhelming public interest in UFOs.
Ruppelt,
Hynek, and others presented the best evidence, including
movie footage, that had been collected by Blue Book. After
spending 12 hours reviewing 6 years of data, the Robertson
Panel concluded that most UFO reports had prosaic explanations,
and that all could be explained with further investigation,
which they deemed not worth the effort.
In
their final report, they stressed that low-grade, unverifiable
UFO reports were overloading intelligence channels, with
the risk of missing a genuine conventional threat to the
U.S. Therefore, they recommended the Air Force de-emphasize
the subject of UFOs and embark on a debunking campaign
to lessen public interest. They suggested debunkery through
the mass media, including Walt Disney Productions, and
using psychologists, astronomers, and celebrities to ridicule
the phenomenon and put forward prosaic explanations. Furthermore,
civilian UFO groups "should be watched because of
their potentially great influence on mass thinking ...
The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of
such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in
mind."
It
is the conclusion of many researchers that the Robertson
Panel was recommending controlling public opinion through
a program of official propaganda and spying. They also
believe these recommendations helped shape Air Force policy
regarding UFO study not only immediately afterward, but
also into the present day. There is evidence that the
Panel's recommendations were being carried out at least
two decades after its conclusions were issued.
In
December 1953, Joint Army-Navy-Air Force Regulation number
146 made it a crime for military personnel to discuss
classified UFO reports with unauthorized persons. Violators
faced up to two years in prison and/or fines of up to
$10,000.
Aftermath
of Robertson Panel
In
his book, Ruppelt described the demoralization of the
Blue Book staff and the stripping of their investigative
duties following the Robertson Panel jurisdiction.
As
an immediate consequence of the Robertson Panel recommendations,
in February 1953, the Air Force issued Regulation 200-2,
ordering air base officers to publicly discuss UFO incidents
only if they were judged to have been solved, and to classify
all the unsolved cases to keep them out of the public
eye.
The
same month, investigative duties started to be taken on
by the newly formed 4602nd Air Intelligence Squadron (AISS)
of the Air Defense Command. The 4602nd AISS was assigned
the task of investigating only the most important UFO
cases with intelligence or national security implications.
These cases were deliberately siphoned away from Blue
Book, leaving Blue Book to deal with the more trivial
reports.
General
Nathan Twining, who started Project Sign in 1947, was
now Air Force Chief of Staff. In August 1954, he was to
further codify the responsibilities of the 4602nd AISS
by issuing an updated Air Force Regulation 200-2. In addition,
UFOs (called "UFOBs") were defined as "any
airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics,
or unusual features, does not conform to any presently
known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively
identified as a familiar object." Investigation of
UFOs was stated to be for the purposes of national security
and to ascertain "technical aspects." AFR 200-2
again stated that Blue Book could discuss UFO cases with
the media only if they were regarded as having a conventional
explanation. If they were unidentified, the media was
to be told only that the situation was being analyzed.
Blue Book was also ordered to reduce the number of unidentified
to a minimum.
All
this work was done secretly. The public face of Blue Book
continued to be the official Air Force investigation of
UFOs, but the reality was it had essentially been reduced
to doing very little serious investigation, and had become
almost solely a public relations outfit with a debunking
mandate. To cite one example, by the end of 1956, the
number of cases listed as unsolved had dipped to barely
0.4 percent, from the 20 to 30% only a few years earlier.
Eventually,
Ruppelt requested reassignment; at his departure in August
1953, his staff had been reduced from more than ten (precise
numbers of personnel varied) to just two subordinates
and himself. His temporary replacement was a non-commissioned
officer. Most who succeeded him as Blue Book director
exhibited either apathy or outright hostility to the subject
of UFOs, or were hampered by a lack of funding and official
support.
UFO
investigators often regard Ruppelt's brief tenure at Blue
Book as the high-water mark of public Air Force investigations
of UFOs, when UFO investigations were treated seriously
and had support at high levels. Thereafter, Project Blue
Book descended into a new "Dark Ages" from which
many UFO investigators argue it never emerged. However,
Ruppelt later came to embrace the Blue Book perspective
that there was nothing extraordinary about UFOs; he even
labeled the subject a "Space Age Myth."
Captain
Hardin era
In
March 1954, Captain Charles Hardin was appointed the head
of Blue Book; however, the 4602nd conducted most UFO investigations,
and Hardin did not object. Ruppelt wrote that Hardin "thinks
that anyone who is even interested [in UFOs] is crazy.
They bore him."
In
1955, the Air Force decided that the goal of Blue Book
should not be to investigate UFO reports, but to minimize
the number of unidentified UFO reports. By late 1956,
the number of unidentified sightings had dropped from
the 20-25% of the Ruppelt era, to less than 1%.
Captain
Gregory era
Captain
George T. Gregory took over as Blue Book's director in
1956. Clark writes that Gregory led Blue Book "in
an even firmer anti-UFO direction than the apathetic Hardin."
The 4602nd was dissolved, and the 1066th Air Intelligence
Service Squadron was charged with UFO investigations.
In
fact, there was actually little or no investigation of
UFO reports; a revised AFR 200-2 issued during Gregory's
tenure emphasized that unexplained UFO reports must be
reduced to a minimum.
One
way that Gregory reduced the number of unexplained UFOs
was by simple reclassification. "Possible cases"
became "probable", and "probable"
cases were upgraded to certainties. By this logic, a possible
comet became a probable comet, while a probable comet
was flatly declared to have been a misidentified comet.
Similarly, if a witness reported an observation of an
unusual balloon-like object, Blue Book usually classified
it as a balloon, with no research and qualification. These
procedures became standard for most of Blue Book's later
investigations; see Hynek's comments below.
Major
Friend era
Major
Robert J. Friend was appointed the head of Blue Book in
1958. Friend made some attempts to reverse the direction
Blue Book had taken since 1954. Clark writes that "Friend's
efforts to upgrade the files and catalog sightings according
to various observed statistics were frustrated by a lack
of funding and assistance."
Heartened
by Friend's efforts, Hynek organized the first of several
meetings between Blue Book staffers and ATIC personnel
in 1959. Hynek suggested that some older UFO reports should
be reevaluated, with the ostensible aim of moving them
from the "unknown" to the "identified"
category. Hynek's plans came to naught.
During
Friend's tenure, ATIC contemplated passing oversight of
Blue Book to another Air Force agency, but neither the
Air Research and Development Center, nor the Office of
Information for the Secretary of the Air Force was interested.
In
1960, there were U.S. Congressional hearings regarding
UFOs. Civilian UFO research group NICAP had publicly charged
Blue Book with covering up UFO evidence, and had also
acquired a few allies in the U.S. Congress. Blue Book
was investigated by the Congress and the CIA, with critics
— most notably the civilian UFO group NICAP asserting
that Blue Book was lacking as a scientific study. In response,
ATIC added personnel (increasing the total personnel to
three military personnel, plus civilian secretaries) and
increased Blue Book's budget. This seemed to mollify some
of Blue Book's critics, but it was only temporary. A few
years later, the criticism would be even louder.
By
the time he was transferred from Blue Book in 1963, Friend
thought that Blue Book was effectively useless and ought
to be dissolved, even if it caused an outcry amongst the
public.
Major
Quintanilla era
Major
Hector Quintanilla took over as Blue Book's leader in
August 1963. He largely continued the debunking efforts,
and it was under his direction that Blue Book received
some of its sharpest criticism. UFO researcher Jerome
Clark goes so far as to write that, by this time, Blue
Book had "lost all credibility."
Physicist
and UFO researcher Dr.
James E. McDonald once flatly declared
that Quintanilla was "not competent" from either
a scientific or an investigative perspective, although
he also stressed that Quintanilla "shouldn't be held
accountable for it," as he was chosen for his position
by a superior officer, and was following orders in directing
Blue Book.
Blue
Book's explanations of UFO reports were not universally
accepted, however, and critics — including some scientists
— suggested that Project Blue Book performed questionable
research or, worse, was perpetrating cover up. This criticism
grew especially strong and widespread in the 1960s.
Take,
for example, the many mostly nighttime UFO reports from
the midwestern and southeastern United States in the summer
of 1965: Witnesses in Texas reported "multicolored
lights" and large aerial objects shaped like eggs
or diamonds. The Oklahoma Highway Patrol reported that
Tinker Air Force Base (near Oklahoma City) had tracked
up to four UFOs simultaneously, and that several of them
had descended very rapidly: from about 22,000 feet to
about 4,000 feet in just a few seconds, an action well
beyond the capabilities of conventional aircraft of the
era. John Shockley, a meteorologist from Wichita, Kansas,
reported that, using the state Weather Bureau radar, he
tracked a number of odd aerial objects flying at altitudes
between about 6,000 and 9,000 feet. These and other reports
received wide publicity.
Project
Blue Book officially determined the witnesses had mistaken
Jupiter or bright stars (such as Rigel or Betelgeuse)
for something else.
Blue
Book's explanation was widely criticized as inaccurate.
Robert Riser, director of the Oklahoma Science and Art
Foundation Planetarium offered a strongly worded rebuke
of Project Blue Book that was widely circulated: "That
is as far from the truth as you can get. These stars and
planets are on the opposite side of the earth from Oklahoma
City at this time of year. The Air Force must have had
its star finder upside-down during August."
A
newspaper editorial from the Richmond News Leader opined
that "Attempts to dismiss the reported sightings
under the rationale as exhibited by Project Bluebook won't
solve the mystery ... and serve only to heighten the suspicion
that there's something out there that the air force doesn't
want us to know about", while a Wichita-based UPI
reporter noted that "Ordinary radar does not pick
up planets and stars."
Another
case that Blue Book's critics seized upon was the so-called
Portage
County UFO Chase, which began at about
5.00 am, near Ravenna, Ohio on April 17, 1966. Police
officers Dale Spaur and Wilbur Neff spotted what they
described as a disc-shaped, silvery object with a bright
light emanating from its underside, at about 1000 feet
in altitude. They began following the object (which they
reported sometimes descended as low as 50 feet), and police
from several other jurisdictions were involved in the
pursuit. The chase ended about 30 minutes later near Freedom,
Pennsylvania, some 85 miles away.
The
UFO chase made national news, and the police submitted
detailed reports to Blue Book. Five days later, following
brief interviews with only one of the police officers
(but none of the other ground witnesses), Blue Book's
director, Major Hector Quintanilla, announced their conclusions:
The police (one of them an Air Force gunner during the
Korean War) had first chased a communications satellite,
then the planet Venus.
This
conclusion was widely derided, and police officers strenuously
rejected it. In his dissenting conclusion, Hynek described
Blue Book's conclusions as absurd: in their reports, several
of the police had unknowingly described the moon, Venus
and the UFO, though they unknowingly described Venus as
a bright "star" very near the moon. Ohio Congressman
William Stanton said that "The Air Force has suffered
a great loss of prestige in this community ... Once people
entrusted with the public welfare no longer think the
people can handle the truth, then the people, in return,
will no longer trust the government."
In
September 1968, Hynek received a letter from Colonel Raymond
Sleeper of the Foreign Technology Division. Sleeper noted
that Hynek had publicly accused Blue Book of shoddy science,
and further asked Hynek to offer advice on how Blue Book
could improve its scientific methods. Hynek was to later
declare that Sleeper's letter was "the first time
in my 20 year association with the air force as scientific
consultant that I had been officially asked for criticism
and advice [regarding] ... the UFO problem."
Hynek
wrote a detailed response, dated October 7, 1968, suggesting
several areas where Blue Book could improve. In part,
he wrote:
Despite
Sleeper's request for criticism, none of Hynek's commentary
resulted in any substantial changes in Blue Book.
Quintanilla's
own perspective on the project is documented in his manuscript,
"UFOs,
An Air Force Dilemma." Lt. Col Quintanilla
wrote the manuscript in 1975, but it was not published
until after his death in 1998. Quintanilla states in the
text that he personally believed it arrogant to think
human beings were the only intelligent life in the universe.
Yet, while he found it highly likely that intelligent
life existed beyond earth, he had no hard evidence of
any extra terrestrial visitation.
Congressional
hearing
In
1966, a string of UFO sightings in Massachusetts and New
Hampshire provoked a Congressional Hearing by the House
Committee on Armed Services. According to attachments
to the hearing, the Air Force had at first stated that
the sightings were the result of a training exercise happening
in the area. But NICAP, the National Investigations Committee
on Aerial Phenomena, reported that there was no record
of a plane flying at the time the sightings occurred.
Another report alleged that the UFO was actually a flying
billboard advertising gasoline. Raymond Fowler (of NICAP)
added his own interviews with the locals, who saw Air
Force officers confiscating newspapers with the story
of UFOs and telling them not to report what they had seen.
Two police officers who had witnessed the UFOs, Eugene
Bertrand and David Hunt, wrote a letter to Major Quintanilla
stating that they felt their reputations were destroyed
by the Air Force. "It was impossible to mistake what
we saw for any kind of military operation, regardless
of altitude," the irritated officers wrote, adding
that there was no way it could have been a balloon or
helicopter. According to Secretary Harold Brown of the
Air Force, Blue Book consisted of three steps: investigation,
analysis, and the distribution of information gathered
to interested parties. After Brown gave permission, the
press were invited into the hearing. By the time of the
hearing, Blue Book had identified and explained 95% of
the reported UFO sightings. None of these were extraterrestrial
or a threat to national security. Brown himself proclaimed,
"I know of no one of scientific standing or executive
standing with a detailed knowledge of this, in our organization
who believes that they came from extraterrestrial sources."
Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a science consultant to Blue Book,
suggested in an unedited statement that a "civilian
panel of physical and social scientists" be formed
"for the express purpose of determining whether a
major problem really exist" in regards to UFOs. Hynek
remarked that he has "not seen any evidence to confirm"
extraterrestrials, "nor do I know any competent scientist
who has, or who believes that any kind of extraterrestrial
intelligence is involved."
Condon
Committee
Criticism
of Blue Book continued to grow through the mid-1960s.
NICAP's membership ballooned to about 15,000, and the
group charged the U.S. Government with a cover-up of UFO
evidence.
Following
U.S. Congressional hearings, the Condon Committee was
established in 1966, ostensibly as a neutral scientific
research body. However, the Committee became mired in
controversy, with some members charging director Edward
U. Condon with bias, and critics would question the validity
and the scientific rigor of the Condon Report.
In
the end, the Condon Committee suggested that there was
nothing extraordinary about UFOs, and while it left a
minority of cases unexplained, the report also argued
that further research would not be likely to yield significant
results.
End
In
response to the Condon Committee's conclusions, Secretary
of the Air Force Robert C. Seamans, Jr. announced that
Blue Book would soon be closed, because further funding
"cannot be justified either on the grounds of national
security or in the interest of science." The last
publicly acknowledged day of Blue Book operations was
December 17, 1969. However, researcher Brad Sparks, citing
research from the May, 1970 issue of NICAP's UFO Investigator,
reports that the last day of Blue Book activity was actually
January 30, 1970. According to Sparks, Air Force officials
wanted to keep the Air Force's reaction to the UFO problem
from overlapping into a fourth decade, and thus altered
the date of Blue Book's closure in official files.
Blue
Book's files were sent to the Air Force Archives at Maxwell
Air Force Base in Alabama. Major David Shea was to later
claim that Maxwell was chosen because it was "accessible
yet not too inviting."
Ultimately,
Project Blue Book stated that UFOs sightings were generated
as a result of:
Despite
this, the summary section of the Battelle Institute's
final report declared it was "highly improbable that
any of the reports of unidentified aerial objects ...
represent observations of technological developments outside
the range of present-day knowledge." A number of
researchers, including Dr. Bruce Maccabee, who extensively
reviewed the data, have noted that the conclusions of
the analysts were usually at odds with their own statistical
results, displayed in 240 charts, tables, graphs and maps.
Some conjecture that the analysts may simply have had
trouble accepting their own results or may have written
the conclusions to satisfy the new political climate within
Blue Book following the Robertson Panel.
When
the Air Force finally made Special Report #14 public in
October 1955, it was claimed that the report scientifically
proved that UFOs did not exist. Critics of this claim
note that the report actually proved that the "unknowns"
were distinctly different from the "knowns"
at a very high statistical significance level. The Air
Force also incorrectly claimed that only 3% of the cases
studied were unknowns, instead of the actual
22%. They further claimed that the residual
3% would probably disappear if more complete data were
available. Critics counter that this ignored the fact
that the analysts had already thrown such cases into the
category of "insufficient information", whereas
both "knowns" and "unknowns" were
deemed to have sufficient information to make a determination.
Also the "unknowns" tended to represent the
higher quality cases, q.e. reports that already had better
information and witnesses.
The
result of the monumental BMI study were echoed by a 1979
French GEPAN report which stated that about a quarter
of over 1,600 closely studied UFO cases defied explanation,
stating, in part, "These cases ... pose a real question."
When GEPAN's successor SEPRA closed in 2004, 5,800 cases
had been analyzed, and the percentage of inexplicable
unknowns had dropped to about 14%. The head of SEPRA,
Dr. Jean-Jacques Velasco, found the evidence of extraterrestrial
origins so convincing in these remaining unknowns, that
he wrote a book about it in 2005.
Hynek's
criticism
Hynek
was an associate member of the Robertson Panel, which
recommended that UFOs needed debunking. A few years later,
however, Hynek's opinions about UFOs changed, and he thought
they represented an unsolved mystery deserving scientific
scrutiny. As the only scientist involved with U.S. Government
UFO studies from the beginning to the end, he could offer
a unique perspective on Projects Sign, Grudge, and Blue
Book.
After
what he described as a promising beginning with a potential
for scientific research, Hynek grew increasingly disenchanted
with Blue Book during his tenure with the project, leveling
accusations of indifference, incompetence, and of shoddy
research on the part of Air Force personnel. Hynek notes
that during its existence, critics dubbed Blue Book "The
Society for the Explanation of the Uninvestigated."
Blue
Book was headed by Ruppelt, then Captain Hardin, Captain
Gregory, Major Friend, and finally Major Hector Quintanilla.
Hynek had kind words only for Ruppelt and Friend. Of Ruppelt,
he wrote "In my contacts with him, I found him to
be honest and seriously puzzled about the whole phenomenon."
Of Friend, he wrote "Of all the officers I worked
with in Blue Book, Colonel Friend earned my respect. Whatever
private views he may have held, he was a total and practical
realist, and sitting where he could see the scoreboard,
he recognized the limitations of his office but conducted
himself with dignity and a total lack of the bombast that
characterized several of the other Blue Book heads."
He
held Quintanilla in especially low regard: "Quintanilla's
method was simple: disregard any evidence that was counter
to his hypothesis." Hynek wrote that during Air Force
Major Hector Quintanilla's tenure as Blue Book's director,
"the flag of the utter nonsense school was flying
at its highest on the mast." Hynek reported that
Sergeant David Moody, one of Quintanilla's subordinates,
"epitomized the conviction-before-trial method. Anything
that he didn't understand or didn't like was immediately
put into the psychological category, which meant 'crackpot'."
Hynek
reported bitter exchanges with Moody when the latter refused
to research UFO sightings thoroughly, describing Moody
as "the master of the possible: possible balloon,
possible aircraft, possible birds, which then became,
by his own hand (and I argued with him violently at times)
the probable."
Source:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Blue_Book
