wikipedia | The Robertson Panel first met formally on January 14, 1953 under the direction of Howard P. Robertson. He was a physicist, a CIA consultant, and the director of the Defense Department Weapons Evaluation Group. He was instructed by OSI to assemble a group of prominent scientists to review the Air Force's UFO files. In preparation for this, Robertson first personally reviewed Air Force files and procedures. The Air Force had recently commissioned the Battelle Memorial Institute to scientifically study all of the UFO reports collected by Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book. Robertson hoped to draw on their statistical results, but Battelle insisted that they needed much more time to conduct a proper study. Other panel members were respected scientists who had worked on other classified military projects or studies. All were then skeptical of UFO reports, though to varying degrees. Apart from Robertson, the panel included:
- Luis Alvarez, physicist, radar expert (and later, a Nobel Prize recipient);
- Frederick C. Durant, CIA officer, secretary to the panel and missile expert;
- Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, Brookhaven National Laboratories nuclear physicist;
- Thornton Leigh Page, astrophysicist, radar expert, deputy director of Johns Hopkins Operations Research Office;
- Lloyd Berkner, physicist;
- J. Allen Hynek, astronomer and consultant to Blue Book presented to the panel, but was not a full member.[15]
Most of what is known about the actual proceedings of the meetings comes from notes kept by Durant which were later submitted as a memo to the NSC and commonly referred to as the Durant Report.[2] In addition, various participants would later comment on what transpired from their perspective. Captain (later Major) Edward Ruppelt, then head of Project Blue Book, first revealed the existence of the secret panel in his 1956 book,[4] but without revealing names of panel members.
As early as August 15 CIA analysts, despite their overall skeptical conclusions had noted, "Sightings of UFOs reported at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge, at a time when the background radiation count had risen inexplicably. Here we run out of even "blue yonder" explanations that might be tenable, and, we still are left with numbers of incredible reports from credible observers."[11] On December 2, 1952 CIA Assistant Director Chadwell noted, "Recent reports reaching CIA indicated that further action was desirable and another briefing by the cognizant A-2 and ATIC personnel was held on 25 November. At this time, the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention. The details of some of these incidents have been discussed by AD/SI with DDCI. Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles".[12]
Chadwell's 2 December memorandum contained the draft of recommendations for the NSC, which were:
1. The Director of Central Intelligence shall formulate and carry out a program of intelligence and research activities as required to solve the problem of instant positive identification of unidentified flying objects.
2. Upon call of the Director of Central Intelligence, Government departments and agencies shall provide assistance in this program of intelligence and research to the extent of their capacity provided, however, that the DCI shall avoid duplication of activities presently directed toward the solution of this problem.
3. This effort shall be coordinated with the military services and the Research and Development Board of the Department of Defense, with the Psychological Board and other Governmental agencies as appropriate.
4. The Director of Central Intelligence shall disseminate information concerning the program of intelligence and research activities in this field to the various departments and agencies which have authorized interest therein.""[12]
On December 4, 1952 the Intelligence Advisory Committee agreed:
The Director of Central Intelligence will:
a. Enlist the services of selected scientists to review and appraise the available evidence in the light of pertinent scientific theories.
b. Draft and circulate to the IAC a proposed NSCID, which would signify the IAC concerning the subject and authorize coordination with appropriate non-IAC departments and agencies.[1]
From the IAC minutes of December 4 and the earlier CIA documents it appears clear that the Robertson Panel was the outcome of recommendation (a) of the IAC decision but that this formed part of a wider intended programme of action aimed at enabling rapid positive identification of UFOs from an air defense perspective (i.e. identifying actual Soviet aircraft from misidentified natural phenomena or other conventional objects) and a desire to reduce reporting of UFOs, which were seen as clogging up air defense communication channels and created the risk of exploitation of this effect. The inter-relationships between these wider aspects of the CIA's recommendations and the Battelle Memorial Institute's study, culminating in Blue Book Special Report 14,[13] which identified a statistically significant difference between 'unknowns' and UFO reports that could subsequently be identified, or the study group referenced in a Canadian government document as operating as early as 1950 under the chairmanship of Dr Vannevar Bush, then head of the Joint Research and Development Board, to discover the 'modus operandi' of UFOs[14] are unclear.
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