it would go to the President
of the United States--if they should decide that the UFO's were
interplanetary spacecraft.

Because of military regulations, the names of the panel members,
like the names of so many other people associated with the UFO story,
cannot be revealed. Two of the men had made names for themselves as
practical physicists--they could transform the highest theory for
practical uses. One of these men had developed the radar that pulled
us out of a big hole at the beginning of World War II, and the other
had been one of the fathers of the H-bomb. Another of the panel
members is now the chief civilian adviser to one of our top military
commanders, and another was an astronomer whose unpublished fight to
get the UFO recognized is respected throughout scientific circles.
There was a man who is noted for his highly theoretical physics and
mathematics, and another who had pioneered operations research during
World War II. The sixth member of the panel had been honored by the
American Rocket Society and the International Astronautical
Federation for his work in moving space travel from the Buck Rogers
realm to the point of near reality and who is now a rocket expert.

It was an impressive collection of top scientific talent.

During the first two days of the meeting I reviewed our findings for
the scientists. Since June 1947, when the first UFO report had been
made, ATIC had analyzed 1,593 UFO reports. About 4,400 had actually
been received, but all except 1,593 had been immediately rejected for
analysis. From our studies, we estimated that ATIC received reports
of only 10 per cent of the UFO sightings that were made in the United
States, therefore in five and a half years something like 44,000 UFO
sightings had been made.

Of the 1,593 reports that had been analyzed by Project Blue Book,
and we had studied and evaluated every report in the Air Force files,
we had been able to explain a great many. The actual breakdown was
like this:

_Balloons_.....................18.51%

Known 1.57
Probable 4.99
Possible 11.95
18.51

_Aircraft_.....................11.76%

Known 0.98
Probable 7.74
Possible 3.04
11.76

_Astronomical_ _Bodies_........14.20%

Known 2.79
Probable 4.01
Possible 7.40
14.20

_Other_ ........................4.21%

Searchlights on clouds, birds, blowing paper, inversions,
reflections, etc.

_Ho