What happened
On 17 December 1969, Secretary of the Air Force Robert Seamans announced the end of Project Blue Book, the Air Force's public UFO investigation office at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Begun in March 1952 as the successor to Projects Sign and Grudge, Blue Book had logged 12,618 reports since 1947, of which 701 remained officially unidentified. Its scientific consultant for its entire life was astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who drifted from skeptic to advocate of serious study. The decision rested on the University of Colorado's Condon Report, a National Academy of Sciences review of it, and two decades of Air Force experience. Seamans said continued funding could not be justified for national security or science. The Air Force rescinded its UFO reporting regulations, told callers to contact local police or private groups, and later transferred the case files to the National Archives, where they are available on 94 rolls of microfilm.
The original account
As a result of these investigations and studies and experience gained from investigating UFO reports since 1948, the conclusions of Project BLUE BOOK are: (1) no UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security; (2) there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as 'unidentified' represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge; and (3) there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as 'unidentified' are extraterrestrial vehicles.
U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet, 'UFOs and Project BLUE BOOK', Wright-Patterson AFB, as reproduced by the National Archives (public domain)
The official explanation
The Air Force's position is that Blue Book found no national-security threat, no evidence of technology beyond contemporary science and no evidence of extraterrestrial vehicles, and that the Condon Report and the National Academy of Sciences review showed further study would not be scientifically productive. The unidentified residue, it argued, reflected missing or poor data rather than anything genuinely unknown, and the expense of the programme could no longer be justified.
The anomalous case
Blue Book closed with 701 cases it could not explain, including the Socorro landing and the Exeter police sighting. An Air Force memo dated 20 October 1969 and signed by Brigadier General Carroll Bolender, later released under the Freedom of Information Act, stated that UFO reports which could affect national security were not part of the Blue Book system and would continue to be handled through standard Air Force procedures, implying a separate channel that outlived the public programme. Hynek, who served Blue Book until the end, later accused its personnel of indifference and shoddy research, noting critics' nickname for it: 'The Society for the Explanation of the Uninvestigated.' Decades later, the Pentagon's own AATIP and AARO efforts confirmed that military interest in unidentified objects did not end in 1969.
The strongest argument that this was something genuinely unknown or classified, with each claim attributed to the person who made it.
Documents
- Project BLUE BOOK - Unidentified Flying Objects (NARA reference page and USAF fact sheet) official, archives.gov
- Project Blue Book, complete status reports 1-14 (1951-1955) official, commons.wikimedia.org
Sources
- Project BLUE BOOK - Unidentified Flying Objects U.S. National Archives
- Do Records Show Proof of UFOs? National Archives
- Project Blue Book Wikipedia
Witness reports elsewhere
These archives can't be republished here, so we link to them instead.