Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals is a production of I Heart three D
Speaker 1: audience for full exposure. Listen with headphones. Will of the
Speaker 1: Wind your dancing night? Where do you wander into night?
Speaker 1: Where would you lead? If I keep you in? Find
Speaker 1: willow the wind? Where you're that kind of Norman? For me? Modeste?
Speaker 1: What about you beg of me? Done for the same
Speaker 1: Will of the Wind. I'm Toby Ball and this is
Speaker 1: Strange Arrivals, Episode seven, The Illusion of Movement. In March
Speaker 1: of nine, the area around Hillsdale County, Michigan, experienced a
Speaker 1: wave of UFO sightings that eventually garnered too much media
Speaker 1: coverage for the Pentagon to simply ignore. The Air Force
Speaker 1: sent Alan Heinek, the consulting scientists to Project blue Book
Speaker 1: to see if he could find a satisfactory explanation. Here's
Speaker 1: George Pruitt from w j R Radio in Detroit interviewing
Speaker 1: Project blue Book head Major Hector Quentinilla the local news run.
Speaker 1: An Airporce investigating team is looking into the runch of
Speaker 1: UFO reports that have taken place in southeastern Michigan. The
Speaker 1: team is headed by Dr h Alan Heineck of Northwestern University,
Speaker 1: who was the Air Force Scientific Adviser on project of
Speaker 1: Blue Book. That's the Air Force project to investigate UFO
Speaker 1: reports w j RS Bill Jolls, contact of the Momentary
Speaker 1: Cheaper Blood projects of White Potters and Air Force Base
Speaker 1: near Dayton, Major Hector's Lindonella and had some questions for
Speaker 1: the leaguer about the investigations. No, one of the things
Speaker 1: that general mentors the public and you know, like I
Speaker 1: mean so many you received word uh, any other organization
Speaker 1: perhaps or radar you know with one of the Air
Speaker 1: Force bases or something is also spotting these. We are contact,
Speaker 1: try to defend devided nothing and needs you need now
Speaker 1: is investigation in tale we'll talk and do the deep
Speaker 1: collection trancition. What obsurred, trying to den turn motivity and
Speaker 1: caring to conceded in that fashion. Alan Heineck hit the
Speaker 1: ground in Michigan with two ex dictations of him find
Speaker 1: an explanation for these sightings and find it fast. It
Speaker 1: would not prove to be that easy. Host of the
Speaker 1: Sascer Life podcast, Aaron Gallias. What he finds are that
Speaker 1: the witness statements are while there's a lot of them,
Speaker 1: they aren't necessarily consistent. And Heinek at this time had
Speaker 1: been involved in Air Force investigations of UFOs since the
Speaker 1: ninet and in one capacity or another, and he was
Speaker 1: getting very frustrated, not only with the Air forces seeming
Speaker 1: reluctance to dedicate serious scientific sort of resources to this,
Speaker 1: but also with what he would call the quality of
Speaker 1: some of the witness statements that he was having to
Speaker 1: deal with. It's hard to take a scientific approach sometimes
Speaker 1: when you don't have sort of the raw materials of
Speaker 1: evidence to work with. Heineck's interviews were not limited to eyewitnesses.
Speaker 1: Because the sightings took place You're ann Arbor, home of
Speaker 1: the University of Michigan, he was able to meet with
Speaker 1: local experts in astronomy, botany, and other subjects, hoping they
Speaker 1: might help uncover a prosaic explanation, author Mark O'Connell. And
Speaker 1: after interviewing all these people over the course of several days,
Speaker 1: Heinech he's he's been getting pressure the whole time he's
Speaker 1: in Michigan from his boss holder press conference. Tell everybody
Speaker 1: it was just nothing, Tell them it was just something natural.
Speaker 1: Quentinila's pressure meant that Heinech had to come up with
Speaker 1: a quick solution, too quick Heineck believed for an investigation
Speaker 1: to truly get to the bottom of this series of sightings,
Speaker 1: I think is resisting because he says, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is. I don't know what they saw,
Speaker 1: so I don't want to have a press conference until
Speaker 1: I can say something that I really believe is true. Well,
Speaker 1: his boss at Project Luba Hector Kingtonia, basically says, no,
Speaker 1: you're doing a press conference Friday at five period. You're
Speaker 1: doing a press prenference and you're going to give the
Speaker 1: media a natural explanation for what's going on. He goes
Speaker 1: to this press conference and it becomes incredibly famous in
Speaker 1: Ufo lore, and it's it's well known in the region
Speaker 1: there in southeast Michigan. Even people who aren't Ufo people
Speaker 1: have kind of a sort of folk memory of this.
Speaker 1: He basically says, in a roundabout way that what what
Speaker 1: was seen at various places by various witnesses matches many
Speaker 1: of the conditions required for ignited swamp gas. Now, the
Speaker 1: term swamp gas is unfortunate because why you still might
Speaker 1: not believe that it is the cause of the sightings.
Speaker 1: It's not as ridiculous as it sounds. It's a real phenomenon,
Speaker 1: but the pressure was such that Heinech had to go
Speaker 1: with it because it was the best he could do
Speaker 1: in that time frame. Here's Heinek talking about this explanation
Speaker 1: on Voice of America DA. And let me remind you
Speaker 1: that all that was described, with the exception of two people,
Speaker 1: The great majority of the people described only lights a
Speaker 1: glow and rather small red, yellow, and green lights. Now,
Speaker 1: the fact that this occurred near a swamp or at
Speaker 1: a swamp in both cases a great number of observers
Speaker 1: were referring to that. Those two events led me to
Speaker 1: follow that as a clue. Now, an astronomer doesn't usually
Speaker 1: worry about swamps. His eyes are looking elsewhere generally, but
Speaker 1: in a in his rapid and as thorough away as
Speaker 1: was possible in that time. I did UH notice, for instance,
Speaker 1: that in Professor Minaret's book and Minhart as an astronomer,
Speaker 1: he describes in his book light and Color in the
Speaker 1: Open Air. He describes lights of these colors green, red,
Speaker 1: and yellow and white h as dancing around swamp areas.
Speaker 1: The willow lewis sometimes called Egnis factors and UH known
Speaker 1: by other names. Also. I believe fox fire is another
Speaker 1: name given to it. Heinich talked with professors of chemistry, zoology,
Speaker 1: and botany to get more information. He learned that the
Speaker 1: vegetation decomposing under the winter ice would produce gases, including
Speaker 1: one called phosphene. And the phosphene can, they tell me
Speaker 1: spontaneously ignite after the when the spring thaw comes and
Speaker 1: the gases can be can bubble up from and get released.
Speaker 1: The guesses can ignite spontaneously, and they flicker all over
Speaker 1: other place, though flicker at one place, then go out
Speaker 1: and suddenly appear someplace else, which gives the delusion of motion.
Speaker 1: And this description fit quite well the description that both
Speaker 1: the many co eds at the Hillsdale College uh told me,
Speaker 1: and also the policeman who were actually in the swamp
Speaker 1: and saw off the lights themselves. Remember Bud van Horne's
Speaker 1: description of the lights that he saw near Hillsdale College
Speaker 1: to be on the surface of the earth on the ground. However,
Speaker 1: I don't feel that it was, because it moved very
Speaker 1: freely from left to right and right to left at
Speaker 1: various times, which it would be impossible for a type
Speaker 1: of week ago on wheels or on the ground. Too
Speaker 1: that because of the market portion area. Heinik went on
Speaker 1: to specify that the swamp gas explanation applied only to
Speaker 1: this case and not as an explanation for UFO sightings
Speaker 1: in general. But I would like to emphasize here that
Speaker 1: this does not, in no sense of the word, this
Speaker 1: particular explanation which refers to these two specific cases. Am
Speaker 1: I trying to give a blanket interpretation or a blanket
Speaker 1: solution to the entire uful phenomenon. Given the pressure he
Speaker 1: was under, this was the best Heineck could do. But
Speaker 1: while a case could be made that this was a
Speaker 1: plausible explanation, the nuances were lost on the press, who
Speaker 1: not surprisingly fixated on the term swamp gas. He doesn't
Speaker 1: say that that is what it is. It just said
Speaker 1: this is one possibility of what people might have seen
Speaker 1: that is an explainable, sort of supportable thing. He doesn't
Speaker 1: come out and say it was swamp gas. But what's
Speaker 1: reported in the media is Air Force says UFO sightings
Speaker 1: are swamp gas. Basically, a flying saucer expert hired by
Speaker 1: the Air Force today dismissed reports of weird flying object
Speaker 1: excited throughout southern Michigan this past week. Dr J. Alan
Speaker 1: Heinick told a news conference in Detroit this afternoon, and
Speaker 1: this leads to a huge backlash against the Air Force,
Speaker 1: which is accused of not taking witnesses seriously, not taking
Speaker 1: the subject seriously. The public dissatisfaction was taken up by
Speaker 1: future President Gerald Ford, who at the time was a
Speaker 1: Michigan Congressman and minority leader of the House of Representatives.
Speaker 1: The Congress should investigate the rank of reported sightings of
Speaker 1: unidentified flying objects in Southern men and other parts of
Speaker 1: the country. A congressional inquiry would be most worthwhile because
Speaker 1: the American people are becoming most interested in in many instances,
Speaker 1: very alarmed by the UFO story. I firmly believe the
Speaker 1: American people would feel much better if there was a
Speaker 1: full blown investigation of the life incidents. A second Congressman,
Speaker 1: Edward Rausch of Indiana, also express frustration with the official explanation.
Speaker 1: People want to know what a UFO is, and therefore
Speaker 1: any chance that we have to to learn, we should
Speaker 1: take advantage of us. When you tell them American, I
Speaker 1: can't explain it. He wants to know, why can't you
Speaker 1: explain it? Why doesn't someone explain it? I want someone
Speaker 1: to explain it. And I think that kind of pressure
Speaker 1: is going to change the view of many government on
Speaker 1: officials and members of Congress in the future. The swamp
Speaker 1: gas explanation, whatever its merits, had only increased suspicion that
Speaker 1: the government was not acting in good faith. As the
Speaker 1: face of the investigation, Heinich was the obvious target, and
Speaker 1: he just he's getting squeezed in this vice because on
Speaker 1: the one hand, all his UFO friends are furious with
Speaker 1: him because they all thought this was the big one, right,
Speaker 1: this is the case that nobody can explain away. This
Speaker 1: is the case that proves that we're being visited by
Speaker 1: spaceships from another world, and Heineck didn't give them that. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the people in Michigan were also furious with him because
Speaker 1: he seemed to be saying that you people in Michigan
Speaker 1: are a bunch of dopes and you can't tell swamp
Speaker 1: gas from a UFO, and what is wrong with you.
Speaker 1: Heineck felt that his scientific objectivity was being called into question,
Speaker 1: that he was viewed as a mouthpiece for government obfuscation.
Speaker 1: Some of the lawnforcement officers in Michigan that that Heinech
Speaker 1: dealt with Bud van Horne, for example, who has involved
Speaker 1: his a civil defense official and law enforcement officer connected
Speaker 1: to the Hillsdale sidings. He believed the hine came in
Speaker 1: with his mind already made up. Bud van Horn, you
Speaker 1: both in fact, he watched one last time. I wondered,
Speaker 1: do you going on to the theory and Mr Van
Speaker 1: Horne that it would be gas out there? Because this
Speaker 1: definitely not Bob, very definitely not Bob. I would like
Speaker 1: to ask Mr Van Horne, when you didn't report this
Speaker 1: to the nearest Air Force and had them send some
Speaker 1: planes over to investigate what this thing actually was while
Speaker 1: he watched it from the eleven until two. Because on
Speaker 1: the previous reports to self rate the air Force base,
Speaker 1: I have received very far reception and he had been
Speaker 1: made to look like a very uh ignorant person. Really,
Speaker 1: I can't figure this solved. They had this US hole
Speaker 1: investigating program. But if I had to give an eye opinion,
Speaker 1: I would say a lot of and say either they
Speaker 1: just playing our answer every report they receive remains means
Speaker 1: to favor words, or else they know what it is.
Speaker 1: It's evident in hindsight that whatever else you think of
Speaker 1: Heineck's investigations, he did seem to be genuinely trying to
Speaker 1: figure things out. While he was initially a skeptic, he
Speaker 1: didn't undertake investigations with the predetermined conclusion in mind, regardless
Speaker 1: of how it looked to the public. After this, heine
Speaker 1: begins to realize more and more that the Air Force
Speaker 1: is not necessarily interested in determining what people might be seeing.
Speaker 1: They're really just interested in clearing the cases and ensuring
Speaker 1: that people don't think that it's anything out of the ordinary,
Speaker 1: and that he's sort of been playing a role in this.
Speaker 1: But the way Blue Book operated helped contribute to that perception.
Speaker 1: So I think this, especially the way the Air Force
Speaker 1: sort of positioned him as almost the public face of
Speaker 1: their ridiculous explanation, put him more on guard with with
Speaker 1: respect to how the Air Force handled things and pushed
Speaker 1: him more towards trying to investigate things more with an
Speaker 1: open mind. And this was the point at which heine said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm not going to let the Air
Speaker 1: Force put me in this situation again. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to carry their water anymore. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: Heineck's name had been all over the news. People outside
Speaker 1: of Michigan and who weren't part of the small population
Speaker 1: of UFO enthusiasts identified Heinich as the expert on UFOs.
Speaker 1: There was this vast middle ground of people who thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: this guy knows what he's talking about. This is the
Speaker 1: guy who knows all about UFOs. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: and I would see this researching his files. There's this
Speaker 1: transition between early nineteen sixty six and later in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, when all of a sudden, his correspondence in
Speaker 1: his files just expands like you wouldn't believe. Heinek was
Speaker 1: getting fan letters from people all over the country, all
Speaker 1: over the world, people saying, I want to tell you
Speaker 1: about my experience. I want to tell you about this
Speaker 1: thing I saw, I want to tell you about my
Speaker 1: theory of of reality. He was just getting fan letters
Speaker 1: from people everywhere. So even though the swamp Gass case
Speaker 1: at first glance looked like it could have basically ruined Heineck,
Speaker 1: it could have destroyed him in a very strange way,
Speaker 1: it made him more popular and more credible than ever.
Speaker 1: People around the country, but especially in Michigan, insisted that
Speaker 1: the swamp gas explanation could not stand. They wanted accountability.
Speaker 1: They wanted Congress to step in. So Gerald Ford and
Speaker 1: another one of his colleagues in the Congress actually held
Speaker 1: hearings just a couple of weeks after all of these
Speaker 1: events took place. Heineck, of course, was the star witness.
Speaker 1: His boss, Hector Kingtonia had basically told him you stick
Speaker 1: with the company line or else. Well, Heinick didn't want
Speaker 1: to do that. This is how much Heineck had change.
Speaker 1: He was now willing to buck, really openly buck his
Speaker 1: superiors at the Air Force. When it became Heineck's time
Speaker 1: to address the Senate Panel, the Senate Committee, instead of
Speaker 1: towing the company line, Heinech pulled out a like five
Speaker 1: page prepared statement that he had not cleared with his
Speaker 1: bosses at the Air Force at all. This was a
Speaker 1: complete surprise to the Air Force people. Heineck pulls out
Speaker 1: this prepared statement and he reads it to the Congress
Speaker 1: people and he makes the case for we need to
Speaker 1: get together the country's brightest scientists, and we need to
Speaker 1: fund a study program by which these scientists can spend
Speaker 1: all the time and all the resources they need to
Speaker 1: investigate these really important cases. What Heinick was doing was
Speaker 1: calling for an investigation by people outside of the military
Speaker 1: into the cases that had proved most difficult to explain.
Speaker 1: But even when the military wasn't involved, they were involved.
Speaker 1: Although the Air Force wouldn't run the program, they would
Speaker 1: organize it. There were calls in Congress for a more
Speaker 1: scientific approach to this, and so the Air Force was
Speaker 1: basically commissioned by Congress and funded by Congress to bring
Speaker 1: together scientists from all over the country and give them
Speaker 1: a bunch of reports from the Air Forces Project Bluebook
Speaker 1: effort and have these scientists sort of independently review these reports.
Speaker 1: In April one, one month after the sighting at Manner Farm,
Speaker 1: Gerald Ford, a man who would soon as sent to
Speaker 1: the Presidency, sent out a press release taking credit for
Speaker 1: pressuring the Air Force into quote arranging for a study
Speaker 1: by high caliber scientists of some of the UFO sightings
Speaker 1: which have never been explained. Retired Air Force pilot James mcgahey,
Speaker 1: they wanted m I. T to do it, and m
Speaker 1: my team told him where they could go. They were
Speaker 1: not interested at all. They got Dr Edwin Condon at
Speaker 1: University of Colorado to accept it. He was a had
Speaker 1: been chairman of the National Bureau of Standards. He was
Speaker 1: a very famous quantum mechanics physicist, one of the great
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century. He was a very, very imminent scientist.
Speaker 1: He put together a team to do the investigation, which
Speaker 1: became known as the Condent Report, and that team for
Speaker 1: about two years investigating current sightings in the Best Cases
Speaker 1: in Blue Book. On October seven, a press release from
Speaker 1: the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public
Speaker 1: Affairs announced that the Universe the of Colorado had been
Speaker 1: given a contract of more than three hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to quote analyze phenomena associated with UFO sightings and to
Speaker 1: make recommendations on the Air Forces methods of investigating and
Speaker 1: evaluating UFO reports. Congress had signaled that they were serious
Speaker 1: about the UFO question. Heinick was no longer responding to
Speaker 1: the Air forces pressure to explain away compelling UFO sightings.
Speaker 1: The committee began their work in November after the break
Speaker 1: after the Michigan UFO wave of j Alan, Heinik found
Speaker 1: himself off in the strange position of having both experienced
Speaker 1: his greatest professional humiliation and at the same time risen
Speaker 1: to prominence as the publicly recognized expert on UFOs. In
Speaker 1: the last episode, we looked at the archetypal story of
Speaker 1: the hero's journey, where the hero goes from normal life
Speaker 1: and there's a mysterious or mystical world where he fights
Speaker 1: a battle and emerges back into the normal world, transformed
Speaker 1: and with a message. We tracked how Heinich left the
Speaker 1: normal world of an academic to immerse himself in the
Speaker 1: investigation of UFO sightings taking place across the country, and
Speaker 1: while the vast majority of cases were easily solved, that
Speaker 1: left a small number that defied explanation. Given the available
Speaker 1: resources these cases Socorro, New Mexico, Hillsdale County, Michigan, and others,
Speaker 1: and the Air Forces seemingly prioritizing public debunking over actual investigation,
Speaker 1: lad Heineck to a crisis of conscience. What exactly was
Speaker 1: the nature of the project he was spearheading. The review,
Speaker 1: organized by the Air Force and known informally as the
Speaker 1: Condon Committee, began work at the University of Colorado. It
Speaker 1: was the final opportunity for the official assessment of the
Speaker 1: UFO situation to match up with Heeneck's evolving views. Things
Speaker 1: seem set up well to accomplish this. Aaron Gullias, Now,
Speaker 1: this was the sort of thing that UFO advocates, like
Speaker 1: the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon or NIGHTCAP and
Speaker 1: its leader Donald Kehoe, had been pushing for a long time.
Speaker 1: UFO advocates believed and declared that if the UFO topic
Speaker 1: could be taken out of the Air Force's hands and
Speaker 1: put in the hands of independent scientists, that those scientists would,
Speaker 1: you know, looking at things rationally and objectively, come to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that we were being visited by beings from
Speaker 1: outer space, that at least some of the sightings were extraterrestrial.
Speaker 1: The Air Force had succeeded in covering this up, but
Speaker 1: if we could take it away from the Air Force
Speaker 1: give it to scientists, the truth would come out. So
Speaker 1: there was a lot of initial hope from the UFO
Speaker 1: people that the CONDOM Committee would would come up with
Speaker 1: the truth about or the truth as they wanted it
Speaker 1: found about about UFOs. Heineck himself express optimism that the
Speaker 1: committee shared his outlook. This is Heinik from his February
Speaker 1: seven appearance on k ABC TVs press conference. The kind
Speaker 1: of committee, and Colorado has in charge now with the
Speaker 1: responsibility of taking a scientific look at UFOs and ed condons.
Speaker 1: Has was for years, as you know, in the director
Speaker 1: of the view of Standards, and they very solid person
Speaker 1: in his whole field. But as you probably suspected, he
Speaker 1: was disappointed when the report was finally released in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine, the Condom Committee issues their report. Their report,
Speaker 1: their conclusions are basically not too different from what the
Speaker 1: Air Force had said in their Project Bluebook investigations. Basically,
Speaker 1: the vast majority of sightings that people report are the
Speaker 1: result of people misidentifying planets, stars, satellites conventional aircraft. These
Speaker 1: sightings could in overwhelming numbers be explained, and while there
Speaker 1: was a significant number of cases that could not be
Speaker 1: immediately explained in a conventional manner, that does not prove
Speaker 1: that these are alien craft. Visiting Heineck found this acknowledgement
Speaker 1: that there were unexplainable cases hardening, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: the report's conclusion and the summary released by Condon himself
Speaker 1: were definitive in dismissing the UFO issue. Surprisingly, the count
Speaker 1: of Committee built their final report, they built a pretty
Speaker 1: strong case for the continued study of UFOs, and Heineck
Speaker 1: found that very encouraging. For instance, Heineck noted that one
Speaker 1: of the common features of many UFO sightings was that
Speaker 1: car engines and radios would fail, and he was pleased
Speaker 1: that the Connan Committee would look at this phenomenon. This
Speaker 1: is Heinik again from his interview with k ABC. Cannot
Speaker 1: speak for them obviously, but I understand that they are
Speaker 1: undertaking investigations of physical things, for instance things many many
Speaker 1: reports come in saying that persons car was stopped, UFO
Speaker 1: came by and their car stopped, and when up left
Speaker 1: the car started again. And in the conclusion of the
Speaker 1: section on indirect physical evidence, the report reads of all
Speaker 1: the physical effects claimed to be due to the presence
Speaker 1: of UFOs, the alleged malfunction of automobile motors is perhaps
Speaker 1: the most puzzling. The claim is frequently made, sometimes in
Speaker 1: reports which are impressive because they involved multiple independent witnesses.
Speaker 1: Witnesses seem certain that the function of the cars was
Speaker 1: affected by the unidentified object, which sometimes reportedly was not
Speaker 1: seen until after the malfunction was noted. No satisfactory explanation
Speaker 1: for such effects, if indeed they occurred is apparent, so
Speaker 1: still puzzling. Unfortunately, the head of the committee, Condon, wrote
Speaker 1: a summary of the report in which he just completely
Speaker 1: demolished the idea of UFOs, said, they're ridiculous. It's a
Speaker 1: waste of time and a waste of money to be
Speaker 1: studying these things. And a lot of people who read
Speaker 1: the report simply read Condon's summary and didn't read the
Speaker 1: whole thing, and those parts were unsparing in their assessment.
Speaker 1: The second paragraph of the first section of the Condon
Speaker 1: report says, quote, our general conclusion is that nothing has
Speaker 1: come from the study of UFOs in the past twenty
Speaker 1: one years that has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration
Speaker 1: of the record as it is available to us leads
Speaker 1: us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably
Speaker 1: cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be
Speaker 1: advanced thereby. Later, in the same section, it concluded that
Speaker 1: there was no defense value in continuing this work. Quote
Speaker 1: This question is inseparable from the question of the national
Speaker 1: defense interests of these reports. The history of the past
Speaker 1: twenty one years has repeatedly led Air Force officers to
Speaker 1: the conclusion that none of the things seen or thought
Speaker 1: to have been seen which passed by the name of
Speaker 1: UFO reports constituted any hazard or threat to national security,
Speaker 1: much as was the case with the Robertson panel, there
Speaker 1: were grumblings that the connon Committee had begun their work
Speaker 1: with the conclusion predetermined. The most notable piece of evidence
Speaker 1: for this assertion is a memo written by an assistant
Speaker 1: dean at the University of Colorado named Robert Lowe to
Speaker 1: two men in the university hierarchy. At the time, the
Speaker 1: university had not yet committed to undertaking the committee work
Speaker 1: and are evaluating if they should do so. The memos
Speaker 1: summarizes various faculty members arguments for and against taking it on.
Speaker 1: The controversial passage reads quote, the trick would be, I think,
Speaker 1: to describe the project so that to the public it
Speaker 1: would appear to be a totally objective study, but to
Speaker 1: the scientific community would present the image of a group
Speaker 1: of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective, but having
Speaker 1: an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer. This passage
Speaker 1: can be read to mean that it would be difficult
Speaker 1: to produce a report that satisfied both the public and
Speaker 1: the scientific community, or it could mean that the fix
Speaker 1: was in from the beginning, that before they even looked
Speaker 1: at the evidence, the outcome was predetermined there were no
Speaker 1: flying saucers, so they missed the message, you know, as
Speaker 1: one of these forests for the trees things. They read
Speaker 1: Condon's summation and thought, oh, well, there's nothing here. We
Speaker 1: can trust this guy. He says there's nothing here, So
Speaker 1: there's nothing here. But regardless of these objections and the
Speaker 1: admission that some of the sightings were not able to
Speaker 1: be explained the public who was given the headline and
Speaker 1: not the details, the story that is sort of broadcast
Speaker 1: by the media, sort of simplifying things like the media
Speaker 1: often does, is that scientists conclude UFOs are not alien spacecraft.
Speaker 1: Is basically the headline that goes out and due to this,
Speaker 1: the the Air Force uses this to say, well, you know,
Speaker 1: we had our conclusions. Scientists independently arrived at their conclusions,
Speaker 1: and so we can shut down Project Blue Book. The
Speaker 1: issue has been settled. There's not a danger to national
Speaker 1: security here. This isn't something the Air Force needs to
Speaker 1: be in the business of now. This is not to
Speaker 1: say that the committee's conclusions were wrong. I don't necessarily
Speaker 1: think they were, but looking at the narrative of hi
Speaker 1: Nick's UFO work, it's another time when given the opportunity
Speaker 1: to support his viewpoint on UFOs, the voice of authority
Speaker 1: chose instead to discredit their importance or even existence. So
Speaker 1: the whole thing kind of backfired, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the people involved in the Content Committee who really felt
Speaker 1: that they could make a legitimate case that there was
Speaker 1: some reality to these events and that we needed to
Speaker 1: study them, those those people all just got sort of sideline,
Speaker 1: and the consequences were fatal for the government's investigation efforts.
Speaker 1: There was a final step, though, before the Air Force
Speaker 1: could close Project Blue Book. They knew that their sponsorship
Speaker 1: of the Conton Committee would delegitimize the committee's conclusions in
Speaker 1: some people's eyes, so they had the report reviewed. They
Speaker 1: sent it to the National Academy of Sciences for them
Speaker 1: to review. The report a blue Book, and the National
Speaker 1: Academy of Sciences were even more positive about what they
Speaker 1: said and commended conduct on one of the greatest ideas
Speaker 1: about how he had approached this problem. The National Academy
Speaker 1: of Science report concluded, quote, we are unanimous in the
Speaker 1: opinion that this has been a very creditable effort to
Speaker 1: apply objectively the relevant techniques of science to the solution
Speaker 1: of the UFO problem. It's concluding sentence read quote. On
Speaker 1: the basis of present knowledge, the least likely explanation of
Speaker 1: UFOs is the hypothesis of extraterrestrial visitations by intelligent beings,
Speaker 1: and the Air Force basically immediately closed Project blue Book.
Speaker 1: It's interesting how it was actually closed. According to mcgahey,
Speaker 1: Quentinillo wrote an unpublished biography that contains this story. Quintillia
Speaker 1: loaded the entire files of Project blue Book from Wright
Speaker 1: Patterson Air Force Base, got on a C one eighteen
Speaker 1: cargo airplane and flew to Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama,
Speaker 1: which is where the archives were kept for the Air Force,
Speaker 1: and he handed the entire thing offloaded it off the plane,
Speaker 1: signed it over to them, and got back on the
Speaker 1: plane and flew back to RYE Patterson Air Force Base.
Speaker 1: That was how Blue Book closed. I know this because
Speaker 1: I have his He wrote a unpublished about a two
Speaker 1: page biography of himself and mostly about Blue Book, and
Speaker 1: I have a copy of it. And he was not
Speaker 1: a big fan of Project blue Book, even though he
Speaker 1: was the last commander. But regardless of whether or not
Speaker 1: the fix had been in from the beginning of the
Speaker 1: Condom Committee, the upshot is that by the early seventies,
Speaker 1: the Air Force had pretty much withdrawn, at least publicly
Speaker 1: withdrawn from the UFO investigation field, and civilian organizations like
Speaker 1: Nightcap and APPROO, and a new one, the mutual UFO network,
Speaker 1: that would be emerging during the nineteen seventies, would be
Speaker 1: responsible for collecting sighting reports and investigating things on their own.
Speaker 1: So Project Blue Book ended with a fizzle, not a bang.
Speaker 1: For a moment, UFO proponents and people simply wanting to
Speaker 1: see the study of UFOs given some legitimacy, had reason
Speaker 1: for optimism in the formation of the Conon Committee. There
Speaker 1: was an expectation, given the public relations disaster around the
Speaker 1: swamp gas explanation of the sightings in Michigan that had
Speaker 1: more even handed in their minds, reckoning with the subject
Speaker 1: would be forthcoming, but they were sorely disappointed. The conting
Speaker 1: Matty may well have given a thoroughly objective report, but
Speaker 1: for people such as Heineck, it seemed as though it
Speaker 1: was more of the same biased assessments. But this final
Speaker 1: disappointment freed Heinich from whatever constraints he had previously worked under,
Speaker 1: and he emerged from his time with the Air Force
Speaker 1: with a new message next time on Strange Arrivals. Strange
Speaker 1: Arrivals is a production of I Heeart, three D Audio
Speaker 1: and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. This episode was
Speaker 1: written and hosted by Toby Ball and produced by Miranda
Speaker 1: Hawkins and Josh Thame, with executive producers Alex Williams, Matt
Speaker 1: Frederick and Aaron Manky, and special thanks to Wendy Connors,
Speaker 1: creator of the Faded Discs archive of UFO related audio
Speaker 1: on archive dot org. Learn more about Strange Arrivals over
Speaker 1: at Grimm and Miles dot com, and find more podcasts
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Speaker 1: H