The order of February 11, 1949, that changed the name of Project
Sign to Project Grudge had not directed any change in the operating
policy of the project. It had, in fact, pointed out that the project
was to continue to investigate and evaluate reports of sightings of
unidentified flying objects. In doing this, standard intelligence
procedures would be used. This normally means the _unbiased_
_evaluation_ of intelligence data. But it doesn't take a great deal
of study of the old UFO files to see that standard intelligence
procedures were no longer being used by Project Grudge. Everything
was being evaluated on the premise that UFO's couldn't exist. No
matter what you see or hear, don't believe it.
New people took over Project Grudge. ATIC's top intelligence
specialists who had been so eager to work on Project Sign were no
longer working on Project Grudge. Some of them had drastically and
hurriedly changed their minds about UFO's when they thought that the
Pentagon was no longer sympathetic to the UFO cause. They were now
directing their talents toward more socially acceptable projects.
Other charter members of Project Sign had been "purged." These were
the people who had refused to change their original opinions about
UFO's.
With the new name and the new personnel came the new objective, get
rid of the UFO's. It was never specified this way in writing but it
didn't take much effort to see that this was the goal of Project
Grudge. This unwritten objective was reflected in every memo, report,
and directive.
To reach their objective Project Grudge launched into a campaign
that opened a new age in the history of the UFO. If a comparative age
in world history can be chosen, the Dark Ages would be most
appropriate. Webster's Dictionary defines the Dark Ages as a period
of "intellectual stagnation."
To one who is intimately familiar with UFO history it is clear that
Project Grudge had a two-phase program of UFO annihilation. The first
phase consisted of explaining every UFO report. The second phase was
to tell the public how the Air Force had solved all the sightings.
This, Project Grudge reasoned, would put an end to UFO reports.
Phase one had been started by the people of Project Sign. They
realized that a great many reports were caused by people seeing
balloons or such astronomical bodies as planets, meteors, or stars.
They also realized that before they could get to the heart of the UFO
problems they had to sift out this type of report. To do this they
had called on outside help. Air Weather Service had been asked to
screen the reports and check those that sounded like balloons against
their records of balloon flights. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, distinguished
astrophysicist and head of Ohio State University's Astronomy
Department, had been given a contract to sort out those reports that
could be blamed on stars, planets, meteors, etc. By early March the
Air Weather Service and Dr. Hynek had some positive identifications.
According to the old records, with these solutions and those that
Sign and Grudge had already found, about 50 per cent of the reported
UFO's could now be positively identified as hoaxes, balloons,
planets, sundogs, etc. It was now time to start phase two, the
publicity campaign.
For many months reporters and writers had been trying to reach
behind the security wall and get the UFO story from the horse's
mouth, but no luck. Some of them were still trying but they were
having no success because they were making the mistake of letting it
slip that they didn't believe that airline pilots, military pilots,
scientists, and just all around solid citizens were having
"hallucinations," perpetrating "hoaxes," or being deceived by the
"misidentification of common objects." The people of Project Grudge
weren't looking for this type of writer, they wanted a writer who
would listen to them and write their story. As a public relations
officer later told me, "We had a devil of a time. All of the writers
who were after saucer stories had made their own investigations of
sightings and we couldn't convince them they were wrong."
Before long, however, the right man came along. He was Sidney
Shallet, a writer for _The_ _Saturday_ _Evening_ _Post_. He seemed to
have the prerequisites that were desired, so his visit to ATIC was
cleared through the Pentagon. Harry Haberer, a crack Air Force public
relations man, was assigned the job of seeing that Shallet got his
story. I have heard many times, from both military personnel and
civilians, that the Air Force told Shallet exactly what to say in his
article--play down the UFO's--don't write anything that even hints
that there might be something foreign in our skies. I don't believe
that this is the case. I think that he just wrote the UFO story as it
was told to him, told to him by Project Grudge.
Shallet's article, which appeared in two parts in the April 30 and
May 7, 1949, issues of _The_ _Saturday_ _Evening_ _Post_, is
important in the history of the UFO and in understanding the UFO
problem because it had considerable effect on public opinion. Many
people had, with varying degrees of interest, been wondering about
the UFO's for over a year and a half. Very few had any definite
opinions one way or the other. The feeling seemed to be that the Air
Force is working on the problem and when they get the answer we'll
know. There had been a few brief, ambiguous press releases from the
Air Force but these meant nothing. Consequently when Shallet's
article appeared in the _Post_ it was widely read. It contained
facts, and the facts had come from Air Force Intelligence. This was
the Air Force officially reporting on UFO's for the first time.
The article was typical of the many flying saucer stories that were
to follow in the later years of UFO history, all written from
material obtained from the Air Force. Shallet's article casually
admitted that a few UFO sightings couldn't be explained, but the
reader didn't have much chance to think about this fact because 99
per cent of the story was devoted to the anti-saucer side of the
problem. It was the typical negative approach. I know that the
negative approach is typical of the way that material is handed out
by the Air Force because I was continually being told to "tell them
about the sighting reports we've solved--don't mention the unknowns."
I was never ordered to tell this, but it was a strong suggestion and
in the military when higher headquarters suggests, you do.
Shallet's article started out by psychologically conditioning the
reader by using such phrases as "the great flying saucer scare,"
"rich, full-blown screwiness," "fearsome freaks," and so forth. By
the time the reader gets to the meat of the article he feels like a
rich, full-blown jerk for ever even thinking about UFO's.
He pointed out how the "furor" about UFO reports got so great that
the Air Force was "forced" to investigate the reports reluctantly. He
didn't mention that two months after the first UFO report ATIC had
asked for Project Sign since they believed that UFO's did exist. Nor
did it mention the once Top Secret Estimate of the Situation that
also concluded that UFO's were real. In no way did the article
reflect the excitement and anxiety of the age of Project Sign when
secret conferences preceded and followed every trip to investigate a
UFO report. This was the Air Force being "forced" into reluctantly
investigating the UFO reports.
Laced through the story were the details of several UFO sightings;
some new and some old, as far as the public was concerned. The
original UFO report by Kenneth Arnold couldn't be explained. Arnold,
however, had sold his story to _Fate_ magazine and in the same issue
of _Fate_ were stories with such titles as "Behind the Etheric Veil"
and "Invisible Beings Walk the Earth," suggesting that Arnold's story
might fall into the same category. The sightings where the Air Force
had the answer had detailed explanations. The ones that were unknowns
were mentioned, but only in passing.
Many famous names were quoted. The late General Hoyt S. Vanden-berg,
then Chief of Staff of the Air Force, had seen a flying saucer but it
was just a reflection on the windshield of his B-17. General Lauris
Norstad's UFO was a reflection of a star on a cloud, and General
Curtis E. Le May found out that one out of six UFO's was a balloon;
Colonel McCoy, then chief of ATIC, had seen lots of UFO's. All were
reflections from distant airplanes. In other words, nobody who is
anybody in the Air Force believes in flying saucers.
Figures in the top echelons of the military had spoken.
A few hoaxes and crackpot reports rounded out Mr. Shallet's article.
The reaction to the article wasn't what the Air Force and ATIC
expected. They had thought that the public would read the article and
toss it, and all thoughts of UFO's, into the trash can. But they
didn't. Within a few days the frequency of UFO reports hit an all-
time high. People, both military and civilian, evidently didn't much
care what Generals Vandenberg, Norstad, Le May, or Colonel McCoy
thought; they didn't believe what they were seeing were
hallucinations, reflections, or balloons. What they were seeing were
UFO's, whatever UFO's might be.
I heard many times from ex-Project Grudge people that Shallet had
"crossed" them, he'd vaguely mentioned that there might be a case for
the UFO. This made him pro-saucer.
A few days after the last installment of the _Post_ article the Air
Force gave out a long and detailed press release completely debunking
UFO's, but this had no effect. It only seemed to add to the confusion.
The one thing that Shallet's article accomplished was to plant a
seed of doubt in many people's minds. Was the Air Force telling the
truth about UFO's? The public and a large percentage of the military
didn't know what was going on behind ATIC's barbed-wire fence but
they did know that a lot of reliable people had seen UFO's. Airline
pilots are considered responsible people--airline pilots had seen
UFO's. Experienced military pilots and ground officers are
responsible people--they'd seen UFO's. Scientists, doctors, lawyers,
merchants, and plain old Joe Doakes had seen UFO's, and their friends
knew that they were responsible people. Somehow these facts and the
tone of the _Post_ article didn't quite jibe, and when things don't
jibe, people get suspicious.
In those people who had a good idea of what was going on behind
ATIC's barbed wire, the newspaper reporters and writers with the
"usually reliable sources," the _Post_ article planted a bigger seed
of doubt. Why the sudden change in policy they wondered? If UFO's
were so serious a few months ago, why the sudden debunking? Maybe
Shallet's story was a put-up job for the Air Force. Maybe the
security had been tightened. Their sources of information were
reporting that many people in the military did not quite buy the
Shallet article. The seed of doubt began to grow, and some of these
writers began to start "independent investigations" to get the "true"
story. Research takes time, so during the summer and fall of 1949
there wasn't much apparent UFO activity.
As the writers began to poke around for their own facts, Project
Grudge lapsed more and more into a period of almost complete
inactivity. Good UFO reports continued to come in at the rate of
about ten per month but they weren't being verified or investigated.
Most of them were being discarded. There are few, if any, UFO reports
for the middle and latter part of 1949 in the ATIC files. Only the
logbook, showing incoming reports, gives any idea of the activity of
this period. The meager effort that was being made was going into a
report that evaluated old UFO reports, those received prior to the
spring of 1949. Project Grudge _thought_ that they were writing a
final report on the UFO's.
From the small bits of correspondence and memos that were in the
ATIC files, it was apparent that Project Grudge thought that the UFO
was on its way out. Any writers inquiring about UFO activity were
referred to the debunking press release given out just after the
_Post_ article had been published. There was no more to say. Project
Grudge thought they were winning the UFO battle; the writers thought
that they were covering up a terrific news story--the story that the
Air Force knew what flying saucers were and weren't telling.
By late fall 1949 the material for several UFO stories had been
collected by writers who had been traveling all over the United
States talking to people who had seen UFO's. By early winter the
material had been worked up into UFO stories. In December the presses
began to roll. _True_ magazine "scooped" the world with their story
that UFO's were from outer space.
The _True_ article, entitled, "The Flying Saucers Are Real," was
written by Donald Keyhoe. The article opened with a hard punch. In
the first paragraph Keyhoe concluded that after eight months of
extensive research he had found evidence that the earth was being
closely scrutinized by intelligent beings. Their vehicles were the so-
called flying saucers. Then he proceeded to prove his point. His
argument was built around the three classics: the Mantell, the Chiles-
Whitted, and the Gorman incidents. He took each sighting, detailed
the "facts," ripped the official Air Force conclusions to shreds, and
presented his own analysis. He threw in a varied assortment of
technical facts that gave the article a distinct, authoritative
flavor. This, combined with the fact that _True_ had the name for
printing the truth, hit the reading public like an 8-inch howitzer.
Hours after it appeared in subscribers' mailboxes and on the
newsstands, radio and TV commentators and newspapers were giving it a
big play. UFO's were back in business, to stay. True was in business
too. It is rumored among magazine publishers that Don Keyhoe's
article in _True_ was one of the most widely read and widely
discussed magazine articles in history.
The Air Force had inadvertently helped Keyhoe--in fact, they made
his story a success. He and several other writers had contacted the
Air Force asking for information for their magazine articles. But,
knowing that the articles were pro-saucer, the writers were
unceremoniously sloughed off. Keyhoe carried his fight right to the
top, to General Sory Smith, Director of the Office of Public
Information, but still no dice--the Air Force wasn't divulging any
more than they had already told. Keyhoe construed this to mean tight
security, the tightest type of security. Keyhoe had one more
approach, however. He was an ex-Annapolis graduate, and among his
classmates were such people as Admiral Delmar Fahrney, then a top
figure in the Navy guided missile program and Admiral Calvin Bolster,
the Director of the Office of Naval Research. He went to see them but
they couldn't help him. He _knew_ that this meant the real UFO story
was big and that it could be only one thing--interplanetary
spaceships or earthly weapons--and his contacts denied they were
earthly weapons. He played this security angle in his _True_ article
and in a later book, and it gave the story the needed punch.
But the Air Force wasn't trying to cover up. It was just that they
didn't want Keyhoe or any other saucer fans in their hair. They
couldn't be bothered. They didn't believe in flying saucers and
couldn't feature anybody else believing. Believing, to the people in
ATIC in 1949, meant even raising the possibility that there might be
something to the reports.
The Air Force had a plan to counter the Keyhoe article, or any other
story that might appear. The plan originated at ATIC. It called for a
general officer to hold a short press conference, flash his stars,
and speak the magic words "hoaxes, hallucinations, and the
misidentification of known objects," _True_, Keyhoe and the rest
would go broke trying to peddle their magazines. The _True_ article
did come out, the general spoke, the public laughed, and Keyhoe and
_True_ got rich. Only the other magazines that had planned to run UFO
stories, and that were scooped by _True_, lost out. Their stories
were killed--they would have been an anti-climax to Keyhoe's potboiler.
The Air Force's short press conference was followed by a press
release. On December 27, 1949, it was announced that Project Grudge
had been closed out and the final report on UFO's would be released
to the press in a few days. When it was released it caused widespread
interest because, supposedly, this was all that the Air Force knew
about UFO's. Once again, instead of throwing large amounts of cold
water on the UFO's, it only caused more confusion.
The report was officially titled "Unidentified Flying Objects--
Project Grudge," Technical Report No. 102-AC-49/15-100. But it was
widely referred to as the Grudge Report.
The Grudge Report was a typical military report. There was the body
of the report, which contained the short discussion, conclusions, and
recommendations. Then there were several appendixes that were
supposed to substantiate the conclusions and recommendations made in
the report.
One of the appendixes was the final report of Dr. J. Allen Hynek,
Project Grudge's contract astronomer. Dr. Hynek and his staff had
studied 237 of the best UFO reports. They had spent several months
analyzing each report. By searching through astronomical journals and
checking the location of various celestial bodies, they found that
some UFO's could be explained. Of the 237 reports he and his staff
examined, 32 per cent could be explained astronomically.
The Air Force Air Weather Service and the Air Force Cambridge
Research Laboratory had sifted the reports for UFO's that might have
been balloons. These two organizations had data on the flights of
both the regular weather balloons and the huge, high-flying skyhooks.
They wrote off 12 per cent of the 237 UFO reports under study as
balloons.
This left 56 per cent still unknown. By weeding out the hoaxes, the
reports that were too nebulous to evaluate, and reports that could
well be misidentified airplanes, Project Grudge disposed of another
33 per cent of the reports. This left 23 per cent that fell in the
"unknown" category.
There were more appendixes. The Rand Corporation, one of the most
unpublicized yet highly competent contractors to the Air Force,
looked over the reports and made the statement, "We have found
nothing which would seriously controvert simple rational explanations
of the various phenomena in terms of balloons, conventional aircraft,
planets, meteors, bits of paper, optical illusions, practical jokers,
psychopathological reporters, and the like." But Rand's comment
didn't help a great deal because they didn't come up with any
solutions to any of the 23 per cent unknown.
The Psychology Branch of the Air Force's Aeromedical Laboratory took
a pass at the psychological angles. They said, "there are sufficient
psychological explanations for the reports of unidentified objects to
provide plausible explanations for reports not otherwise
explainable." They pointed out that some people have "spots in front
of their eyes" due to minute solid particles that float about in the
fluids of the eye and cast shadows on the retina. Then they pointed
out that some people are just plain nuts. Many people who read the
Grudge Report took these two points to mean that all UFO observers
either had spots in front of their eyes or were nuts. They broke the
reports down statistically. The people who wrote the report found
that over 70 per cent of the people making sightings reported a light-
colored object. (This I doubt, but that's what the report said.) They
said a big point of these reports of light-colored objects was that
any high-flying object will appear to be dark against the sky. For
this reason the UFO's couldn't be real.
I suggest that the next time you are outdoors and see a bomber go
over at high altitude you look at it closely. Unless it's painted a
dark color it won't look dark.
The U.S. Weather Bureau wrote an extremely comprehensive and
interesting report on all types of lightning. It was included in the
Grudge Report but contained a note: "None of the recorded incidents
appear to have been lightning."
There was one last appendix. It was entitled "Summary of the
Evaluation of Remaining Reports." What the title meant was, We have
23 per cent of the reports that we can't explain but we have to
explain them because we don't believe in flying saucers. This
appendix contributed greatly to the usage of the analogy to the Dark
Ages, the age of "intellectual stagnation."
This appendix was important--it was the meat of the whole report.
Every UFO sighting had been carefully checked, and those with answers
had been sifted out. Then the ones listed in "Summary of the
Evaluation of Remaining Reports" should be the best UFO reports--the
ones with no answers.
This was the appendix that the newsmen grabbed at when the Grudge
Report was released. It contained the big story. But if you'll check
back through old newspaper files you will hardly find a mention of
the Grudge Report.
I was told that reporters just didn't believe it when I tried to
find out why the Grudge Report hadn't been mentioned in the
newspapers. I got the story from a newspaper correspondent in
Washington whom I came to know pretty well and who kept me filled in
on the latest UFO scuttlebutt being passed around the Washington
press circles. He was one of those humans who had a brain like a
filing cabinet; he could remember everything about everything. UFO's
were a hobby of his. He remembered when the Grudge Report came out;
in fact, he'd managed to get a copy of his own. He said the report
had been quite impressive, but only in its ambiguousness, illogical
reasoning, and very apparent effort to write off all UFO reports at
any cost. He, personally, thought that it was a poor attempt to put
out a "fake" report, full of misleading information, to cover up the
real story. Others, he told me, just plainly and simply didn't know
what to think--they were confused.
And they had every right to be confused.
As an example of the way that many of the better reports of the 1947-
49 period were "evaluated" let's take the report of a pilot who
tangled with a UFO near Washington, D.C., on the night of November
18, 1948.
At about 9:45 EST I noticed a light moving generally north to south
over Andrews AFB. It appeared to be one continuous, glowing white
light. I thought it was an aircraft with only one landing light so I
moved in closer to check, as I wanted to get into the landing
pattern. I was well above landing traffic altitude at this time. As I
neared the light I noticed that it was not another airplane. Just
then it began to take violent evasive action so I tried to close on
it. I made first contact at 2,700 feet over the field. I switched my
navigation lights on and off but got no answer so I went in closer--
but the light quickly flew up and over my airplane. I then tried to
close again but the light turned. I tried to turn inside of its turn
and, at the same time, get the light between the moon and me, but
even with my flaps lowered I couldn't turn inside the light. I never
did manage to get into a position where the light was silhouetted
against the moon.
I chased the light up and down and around for about 10 minutes, then
as a last resort I made a pass and turned on my landing lights. Just
before the object made a final tight turn and headed for the coast I
saw that it was a dark gray oval-shaped object, smaller than my T-6.
I couldn't tell if the light was on the object or if the whole object
had been glowing.
Two officers and a crew chief, a master sergeant, completely
corroborated the pilot's report. They had been standing on the flight
line and had witnessed the entire incident.
The Air Weather Service, who had been called in as experts on
weather balloons, read this report. They said, "Definitely not a
balloon." Dr. Hynek said, "No astronomical explanation." It wasn't
another airplane and it wasn't a hallucination.
But Project Grudge had an answer, it _was_ a weather balloon. There
was no explanation as to why they had so glibly reversed the decision
of the Air Weather Service.
There was an answer for every report.
From the 600 pages of appendixes, discussions of the appendixes, and
careful studies of UFO reports, it was concluded that:
Evaluation of reports of unidentified flying objects constitute no
direct threat to the national security of the United States.
Reports of unidentified flying objects are the result of: