On December 17, 1969 the United States government officially closed "Project Blue Book."
It was the latest in a series of Air Force projects established to study unidentified flying objects. The first, Project Sign, began in 1947 after a succession of high-profile UFO sightings began to worry the military. The investigators' official report, published in the summer of 1948, concluded that UFOs were real craft, and were quite possibly extraterrestrial in origin.
Project Sign was followed by the oddly named Project Grudge at the end of 1948. Because of the lack of physical evidence, Grudge's mandate was to debunk any UFO reports. The investigators were unable to explain almost a quarter of the sightings. The rest were almost all ruled as "natural phenomena." Project Grudge was closed at the end of 1951, to be replaced by Project Blue Book in 1952.
Project Blue Book is the best-known of the three. Its original mission was to first determine whether unidentified flying objects were a threat to national security and then to analyze the reports scientifically in an attempt to explain them.
Edward Ruppelt was the first leader of the project, and he required his staff to take all reports seriously. He developed an objective questionnaire to give to all witnesses, fired people if they became too entrenched in a particular theory or viewpoint, and established a Blue Book officer at every U. S. Air Force base.
His investigators were not required to follow the standard chain of command and could interview anyone at any rank. The project received so many reports that investigators became bogged down. Alarmed at the volume, the Central Intelligence Agency formed an oversight committee of scientists to evaluate the project.
The Robertson Committee's report advised the Air Force to back off and not only work to debunk the reports that came in, but also to use the media and scientific experts to ridicule the mere idea of UFOs. They also recommended treating civilian UFO groups with extreme suspicion.
Ruppelt soon found his staff cut by 80 percent, and all unsolved cases became classified. By 1955, Project Blue Book was no longer an investigative body, but a debunking and public relations one.
By the mid-1960s, the project was trying so hard to debunk any sightings that they became an object of public ridicule. In one case, several police officers in Ohio reported chasing a low-flying, lighted object for 30 minutes and over 85 miles, only to be told that they had probably been confused by the Moon, or possibly Venus.
The project was finally formally closed in 1969, and its case files — more than 12,000 in all — were sent to storage at an Air Force base in Alabama. Closing the project did nothing to reduce sightings or the fairly common belief that we are being visited by aliens.
There was a fictionalized TV series called Project Blue Book:
As the Cold War deepens and new political threats loom for Project Blue Book, Dr. Allen Hynek (Aidan Gillen) and Captain Michael Quinn (Michael Malarkey) must delve further down the UFO conspiracy rabbit hole in their dangerous quest for the truth. Soon, cover-ups from the past (including at Roswell) collide with new UFO cases in the present (including at Area 51), forcing our duo to not only question the multi-faceted layers to a broadening global conspiracy, but the very nature and origin of UFOs themselves in an increasingly unstable world. https://www.history.com/shows/project-blue-book
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| Mulder in his office |
Like Fox Mulder on The X-Files, I read the reports years ago and I still want to believe there is some truth to the alien contact and UFO sightings.
For the real reports (now declassified)
Project BLUE BOOK - Unidentified Flying Objects - from the National Archives archives.gov/research/military/air-force/ufos
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