Condon Committee

The Condon Committee was the informal name of the University of Colorado UFO Project, a group funded by the United States Air Force from 1966 to 1968 at the University of Colorado to study unidentified flying objects under the direction of physicist Edward Condon. The result of its work, formally titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, and known as the Condon Report, appeared in 1968.
After examining hundreds of UFO files from the Air Force's Project Blue Book and from the civilian UFO groups National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena and Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, and investigating sightings reported during the life of the Project, the Committee produced a Final Report that said the study of UFOs was unlikely to yield major scientific discoveries.
The Report's conclusions received a mixed reception from scientists and academic journals. The report has been cited as a decisive factor in the generally low level of interest in UFO activity among academics since that time. According to a principal critic of the Report, it is "the most influential public document concerning the scientific status of this UFO problem. Hence, all current scientific work on the UFO problem must refer to the Condon Report".

Background

Beginning in 1947 with Project Sign, which then became Project Grudge and finally Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force conducted formal studies of UFOs, a subject of considerable public and some governmental interest. Blue Book had come under increasing criticism in the 1960s. Growing numbers of critics—including U.S. politicians, newspaper writers, UFO researchers, scientists and some of the general public—were suggesting that Blue Book was conducting shoddy, unsupported research or perpetrating a cover up. The Air Force did not want to continue its studies but did not want a cessation of studies to provoke additional cover-up charges. UFOs had become so controversial that no other government agency was willing to take on further UFO studies.
Following a wave of UFO reports in 1965, astronomer and Blue Book consultant J. Allen Hynek wrote a letter to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board suggesting that a panel convene to re-examine Blue Book. The AFSAB agreed and the committee it formed, chaired by Brian O'Brien, convened for one day in February, 1966, and suggested UFO studies could be undertaken "in more detail and depth than had been possible to date" and that the U.S. Air Force should work "with a few selected universities to provide scientific teams" to study UFOs. The Committee suggested that about 100 well-documented UFO sightings should be studied annually, with about 10 man-days devoted to each case.
At a Congressional UFO hearing on April 5, 1966, Air Force Secretary Harold Brown defended the Air Force's UFO studies and repeated the O'Brien Committee's call for more studies. Hynek repeated his call for "a civilian panel of physical and social scientists" to "examine the UFO problem critically for the express purpose of determining whether a major problem exists." Shortly after the hearing, the Air Force announced it was seeking one or more universities to undertake a study of UFOs. The Air Force wanted to have several groups, but it took some time to find even a single school willing to accept the Air Force's offer. Both Hynek and James E. McDonald suggested their own campuses, Northwestern University and the University of Arizona, and others suggested astronomer Donald Menzel. All were judged too closely allied with one position or another. Hynek had a long association with the Air Force, McDonald was pro-UFO and Menzel anti-UFO. Several universities declined to participate, including Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Walter Orr Roberts, director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Menzel suggested physicist Edward Condon of the University of Colorado.
In the summer of 1966, Condon agreed to consider the Air Force's offer. He was among the best known and most distinguished scientists of his time. Condon's tenacious encounters with the House Unamerican Activities Committee and other government Loyalty Boards in the 1940s and 1950s made him "almost legendary" among fellow scientists. On Condon's behalf, Robert J. Low, an assistant dean of the university's graduate program, explored faculty reaction to the proposed project and found it mixed and wary. He also tried to reassure those who found the enterprise unworthy of scientific investigation. Low told the Denver Post that the project had met the University's acceptance threshold by the narrowest of margins and was accepted largely because it was difficult to say no to the Air Force. Some have suggested that finances were factor in Colorado's decision to accept the Air Force's offer of $313,000 for the project. Condon dismissed this suggestion, noting that $313,000 was a rather modest budget for an undertaking scheduled to last more than a year with a staff of over a dozen. Total funding later rose above $500,000.
On October 6, 1966, the University of Colorado agreed to undertake the UFO study, with Condon as director, Low as coordinator, and Stuart W. Cook, Franklin E. Roach, David R. Saunders and William A. Scott as principal or co-principal investigators. The Air Force announced its selection of Condon and the University of Colorado in October 1966. Other Committee members included astronomer William K. Hartmann; psychologists Michael Wertheimer, Dan Culbertson and graduate student James Wadsworth; chemist Roy Craig; electrical engineer Norman Levine and physicist Frederick Ayer. Many other scientists or experts served in part-time and temporary roles or as consultants. Public response to the Committee's announcement was generally positive. Hynek characterized Condon's perspective towards UFOs as "basically negative", but he also assumed that Condon's opinions would change once he familiarized himself with evidence in some of the more puzzling UFO cases. NICAP's Donald Keyhoe was publicly supportive, but privately expressed fears that the Air Force would be controlling things from behind the scenes. That a scientist of Condon's standing would involve himself with UFO research heartened some academics who had long expressed interest in the subject, such as atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald.
When the Project was announced, The Nation, commented: "If Dr. Condon and his associates come up with anything less than the little green men from Mars, they will be crucified."

Committee work

In November 1966, retired USMC Major Donald Keyhoe and Richard H. Hall, both of NICAP, briefed the panel. They agreed to share NICAP's research files and to improve the collection of UFO reports. The Committee also secured help from APRO, another civilian UFO research group. The Committee moved slowly, hampered by disagreements about the use of funds and methodology. By hiring people with no prior position on UFOs, the Committee staff lacked expertise and subject matter expertise. One Committee member suggested filming UFOs using stereo cameras mounted with diffraction gratings in order to study the spectrum of light emitted by UFOs. This had been attempted some fifteen years earlier following a specific suggestion regarding UFOs made by Joseph Kaplan in 1954, but was quickly judged impractical after a number of such cameras were distributed to Air Force bases. As they began their analyses, Committee members usually worked without coordination with one another. Individuals embraced diverse approaches, especially with respect to the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
In late January 1967, Condon stated in a lecture that he thought the government should not study UFOs because the subject was 'nonsense', adding, "but I'm not supposed to reach that conclusion for another year." One NICAP member resigned from NICAP in protest and Saunders confronted Condon to express his concern that NICAP's withdrawal would eliminate a valuable source of case files and produce damaging publicity.

Low memo controversy

In July 1967, James E. McDonald, a confirmed believer in the validity of UFO sightings, learned from a Committee member about a memo Low had written on August 9, 1966, in which he reassured two University of Colorado administrators that they could expect the study to demonstrate that UFO observations had no basis in reality. "Our study would be conducted almost entirely by non-believers who, though they couldn't possibly prove a negative result, could and probably would add an impressive body of thick evidence that there is no reality to the observations. The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but, to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of non-believers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer." McDonald, after locating a copy of the memo in the project's open files, wrote to Condon, quoting a few lines from it.
In response to the memo, on April 30, 1968, NICAP severed its ties with the Committee and Keyhoe circulated copies of Low's memo. Press coverage included an article, "Flying Saucer Fiasco" by John G. Fuller in the May 1968 issue of Look, that presented interviews with Saunders and Levine, and detailed the controversy and described the project as a "$500,000 trick." Fuller was a journalist identified with those who found UFO sightings credible, the author of a 1966 work on a sighting. Condon responded that the article contained "falsehoods and misrepresentations." Scientific and technical journals reported the controversy. Industrial Research reprinted Low's memo, while Scientific Research interviewed Saunders and Levine, who reported that they were considering a libel suit against Condon for terminating them for alleged "incompetence." They said that Condon had used an "unscientific approach" in directing the Committee. Condon said that calling his methods "unscientific" was itself libelous, and in turn threatened to sue Saunders and Levine. When the American Association for the Advancement of Science covered the Committee controversy in an issue of its official journal Science, Condon first promised to grant an interview, but then declined. He resigned from the AAAS in protest when the article was published without his input. Congressional Representative J. Edward Roush said the Look article raised "grave doubts as to the scientific profundity and objectivity of the project." He asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the study, which the GAO declined to do. He held a hearing dominated by critics of the Project. Roush later joined the board of NICAP. Low resigned from the Project in May 1968.
Some later critics of the Committee's work saw little reason to make much of the trick memo. Committee member David Saunders wrote that "to present Low as a plotter or conspirator is unfair and hardly accurate." Hynek wrote that Low "wanted his university to get the contract...and to convince the university administration that they should take it." Project investigator Roy Craig later wrote that the memo did not trouble him because Condon had not known of the Low memo for eighteen months and it did not reflect his views. Condon wrote in the Project's Final Report that the memo's description of the Project as emphasizing the "psychology and sociology" of those who report UFO sightings showed how completely Low misunderstood the Project when he wrote the memo.