When Air Force investigators have determined that a UFO report does not represent anything of interest to Intelligence, their primary duty ends. However, since many UFO puzzles are of interest for scientific or technical reasons, the investigators try to find the specific explanation of each case and, if it has attracted public attention, give the final solution to the press.
Civilian Saucer Groups
Since the first flying saucers were reported in 1947, dozens of civilian clubs have been organized throughout the world to collect UFO reports and publish “the truth” allegedly suppressed by government sources. During the last decade the roster in the United States has included such groups as the Borderland Sciences Research Associates (California), Interplanetary Intelligence of Unidentified Flying Objects (Oklahoma), Intercontinental Aerial Research Foundation (Nebraska), UFO Research Committee (Ohio), Civilian Saucer Intelligence (New York), Waukegan Contact Group (Illinois), Saucer Investigative Research Organization (Georgia), World Society of the Flying Saucer (Idaho), Civilian Research on Interplanetary Flying Objects (Ohio), and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (Washington, D.C.). The oldest of these saucer clubs, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (Arizona) was founded in 1952 and issues a bimonthly news sheet, the APRO Bulletin. More or less regular publications (some now defunct) of these groups have included the Cosmic Researcher, Interplanetary News Service, CRIFO Orbit, Saucerian Bulletin, and UFO Critical Bulletin. In recent years some of the best factual accounts of UFO incidents (as well as some of the weirdest speculation) have appeared in the magazine Flying Saucers, which is not connected with any club.
A few clubs, chiefly in California, are semireligious in character, claiming repeated communication with ethereal beings in space. Some clubs accept “contact” stories as valid, others do not. Certain articles of faith are apparently common to all such groups: that UFOs are actually vehicles from outer space; that they sometimes land on earth and occasionally leave physical traces in the form of metallic or organic substances; that scientists who cannot accept these beliefs are hypocrites, archfiends, anti-Galileo reactionaries, stooges for the Army or the Air Force, and members of the conspiracy to delude the public.
NICAP
The largest and probably the most influential saucer group is the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), with affiliated subcommittees in various parts of the country. Many members of local organizations such as the UFO Research Committee of Akron, Ohio, also belong to NICAP and help maintain close liaison. The bimonthly news sheet, the UFO Investigator, is distributed to members of NICAP and to prominent persons in the government and other fields; it regularly lists recent UFO sightings reported by members, and occasionally prints a detailed report of a specific case. Few of the sightings reported can be independently evaluated because the accounts often omit such essential facts as exact times, dates, places, direction of motion, etc.
With headquarters in Washington, D.C., NICAP strongly reflects the views of its director, Major Donald E. Keyhoe, USMC (Ret.), that UFOs may be interplanetary in origin, sometimes land on earth, but rarely if ever make contact with human beings. Like most saucer believers, many members of NICAP tend to assume without adequate investigation that many unusual sky phenomena reported in the newspapers may be extraterrestrial objects, and they often maintain this attitude in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. When the BOAC Comet exploded near Calcutta on May 2, 1953, Major Keyhoe theorized that a UFO might accidentally or deliberately have collided with the plane. He continued such speculation even after British aviation officials announced, after months of study, that the crash was caused by metal fatigue[[XIII-1]]. Many of the items printed in the UFO Investigator are based on incomplete evidence. Under the headline “Strange Series of Fireballs Reported,” NICAP listed a UFO observed on March 7, 1960, at about 8:10 P.M., visible from the Canadian border to Florida, and described by some observers as three or four UFOs flying in formation[[XIII-3]]. This phenomenon was actually the satellite Discoverer VIII making its final descent to earth.
NICAP membership is theoretically open to any non-Communist citizen[[XIII-4]], but applicants from the “contactee” fringe are not encouraged. The committee once canceled the membership of a space evangelist when he claimed publicly to be a spokesman for NICAP, and in 1958 it canceled the membership of seven famous contactees who had been admitted without the knowledge of the director[[XIII-5]].
Investigations are carried out as spare-time projects of the members themselves, some of whom constitute an advisory panel of experts. Although many are highly respected in their own professions—television, journalism, military science, religion, government, aviation, engineering, medicine, psychology, and teaching in the physical sciences—few are recognized specialists in the fields required for the analysis of most UFO cases—radar propagation, the physics of optics, meteorology, and astronomy.
Since 1957 a major goal of NICAP has been a Congressional inquiry that supposedly would reveal an Air Force conspiracy to deny the reality of flying saucers[XIII-7]. In 1957 the director lodged a formal complaint with a member of the United States Senate charging that the Air Force continually made false statements on UFOs to the press, the public, and members of Congress. In support of this accusation Major Keyhoe submitted summaries of more than two hundred incidents[[XIII-7]].