And, when all was said and done, the Grudge report had explained all but twenty-three percent of the sightings. But the Psychology Branch of the Air Force's Aeromedical Laboratory attempted to eliminate that 25 percent. The officials there, wrote, "There are sufficient psychological explanations for the reports of unidentified flying objects to provide for plausible explanations for reports not otherwise explainable… "
But the point that seems to have gotten lost is that nearly a quarter of the sightings reported to the Air Force did not have mundane explanations. So, when they failed to find a solid explanation, they invented the psychological category. As those at the Aeromedical Laboratory suggested, some people just had spots in front of their eyes.
But even though the Air Force had announced that it had closed Project Grudge, such was not the case. Grudge continued to function at a low level with a single investigator, Lieutenant Jerry Cummings. When a series of spectacular sightings were made at the Army's Signal Corps Center at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, Cummings, and Lieutenant Colonel N. R. Rosengarten, who was the chief of ATIC's Aircraft and Missiles Branch, were sent to investigate. They then returned to personally brief the chief of Air Force intelligence, Major General C.P. Cabell.
The meeting didn't go well as Cabell, other military officers, and representatives of Republic Aircraft complained about the quality of the work being done by Grudge. There was a threat to national security, though no one was sure exactly what that threat might be. Cummings and Rosengarten were ordered back to Wright-Patterson with orders to reorganize the UFO project.
But Cummings didn't have much of a chance to do anything. He was discharged from the Air Force. Rosengarten then asked Ed Ruppelt, an intelligence officer at ATIC, to reorganize Grudge.
Ruppelt began to file the reports and cross-reference them. He found that many were missing. He put together a staff who had no firm beliefs for or against the idea that flying saucers were real. And, he subscribed to a clipping service so that he would be able to learn of sightings that were not reported to the military. He hoped to gain some insights into the UFO problem by gathering data and statistics about them.
In 1950 and 1951 combined, there were 379 sightings reported to the UFO project. Of those, all but 49 were explained. Other sightings, from 1947 to 1949 were periodically reviewed, and new solutions were attached to the old cases.
In March 1952, Grudge had its status upgraded. Now it was the Aerial Phenomena Group and the code name had been changed once again. It was now known as Project Blue Book.
But just as Ruppelt was getting things organized, the situation changed. Inside of getting UFO reports two or three a week, they began to come in two or three a day. In his book he wrote that the clippings that had been coming in a thick envelope began to arrive in boxes.
July would be the big month. On two consecutive weekends, UFOs were spotted over Washington, D.C. Fighters were scrambled, people on the ground saw the lights in the sky, and airline pilots alerted about the lights saw them as well. The sightings were front page news throughout the country, forcing the military to respond to reporters and the public.
At a hastily called press conference, Major General John A. Samford told reporters that the sightings might be the result of temperature inversions. Samford hadn't meant that as a complete answer, but the news media seized it and ran with.
More importantly, Ruppelt, who did investigate, to some extent, the sightings, pointed out that Air Force personnel were pressured by their superiors to change their stories. Lights that had been inexplicable became stars seen through the haze hanging over the city. Skeptics suggested the radar returns were the result of the inversion layers. It made no difference that the men on the scopes, and one of the military officers, were experts and could tell weather phenomena from solid targets. The sightings were explained, in the public arena, as temperature inversion. Curiously, the Blue Book files listed them as "unidentified."
Press and public interest increased dramatically when newspapers bannered the Washington National sightings at the end of July. During August the sightings throughout the country continued, as they did in September. By the end of 1952, the Air Force had added more than fifteen hundred sightings to the files. More importantly, over three hundred of them were unidentified. The situation had become intolerable.
Part of the solution was the creation of the Robertson Panel. In September 1952, as the UFO reports were still flooding Project Blue Book, H. Marshal Chadwell, then Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, sent a memo to General Walter Bedell Smith, then Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) for the CIA. He wrote, "Recently an inquiry was conducted by the Office of Scientific Intelligence to determine whether there are national security implications in the problem of 'unidentified flying objects,' i.e. flying saucers; whether adequate study and research is currently being directed to this problem in its relation to such national security implications; and further investigation and research should be instituted, by whom, and under what aegis."
Chadwell continued, writing, "… [P]ublic concern with the phenomena indicates that a fair proportion of our population is mentally conditioned to the acceptance of the incredible. In this fact lies the potential for the touching-off of mass hysteria… In order to minimize risk of panic, a national policy should be established as to what should be told to the public regarding the phenomena."
Those words should have a chilling effect on anyone who reads them. What Chadwell is saying, in his best big brother voice, is that American citizens are gullible, believe incredible things, and can be manipulated into mass hysteria. The government, with its more learned and stable members, should decide what can be or should not be told to the public about flying saucers.
It is also clear, from the tone of the document what Chadwell already believes. Tales of flying saucers are incredible. These things simply cannot exist and therefore do not exist.
In December 1952, just weeks before the group would actually meet, Chadwell decided to form a scientific advisory board. It was decided that Dr. H. P. Robertson, who had accompanied Chadwell to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base to review the UFO evidence, would chair the investigation.
Under the auspices of the CIA, the panel convened on January 14, 1953. They reviewed the best of the UFO cases including both the films that had been taken by private citizens. They examined the radar cases and the photographic cases. In fact, there are indications that it was the movies that had brought the various scientists to the table.
On Friday afternoon, with the evidence presented including briefings by Ruppelt and Hynek, Robertson was given, or took, the task of writing the final report. By the next morning, in an age that had no copy machines, Fax machines, word processors or computers, Robinson finished his draft of the report. Not only that, Lloyd Berkner had already read it. As had Chadwell, who had taken it to the Air Force Directorate of Intelligence to have it approved. Before the committee assembled on Saturday morning, the report was, in essence, finished and approved.
One other thing must be understood to keep the Robertson Panel in perspective. Their first concern was to determine if UFOs posed a threat to national security. That was a question they could answer. They decided, based on the number of UFO reports made through official intelligence channels through the years, that UFOs did, after a fashion, pose a threat.
Ed Ruppelt mentioned it in his analysis of the Robertson Panel. Too many reports at the wrong time could mask a Soviet attack on the United States. Although hindsight shows us this threat was of little importance, especially when the sorry state of Soviet missile research in 1952 is considered, it was a major concern to those men in the intelligence field in the early 1950s. A sudden flood of UFO reports, not unlike what had happened during the summer of 1952, could create havoc in the message traffic so that critical messages of an imminent attack would be hidden or lost.