DOW-UAP-D154, Transcript of a Presentation by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, 1952

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OFFICE OF THE UNDER SECRETARY OF WAR 5000 DEFENSE PENTAGON INTE LLIGENCE AND SECURITY Transcript of a Presentation by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, 1952 This document is a transcript of a March 1952 presentation by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt outlining the U.S. Air Force’s reorganized investigation into unidentified flying objects (UFOs). The presentation previews prospective technical methodologies, such as diffraction-grating photography and radar-scope synchronization, that were subsequently incorporated into Project Blue Book, a U.S. Air Force program active from 1952 to 1969 that investigated the nature and origin of UFOs. Ruppelt explains that out of approximately 800 historical cases reviewed by the Air Force, approximately 20% remained unexplained after technical analysis. These unresolved reports were sourced from credible military personnel, commercial pilots, and other qualified technical observers. He highlights geographic report concentrations around sensitive national security and nuclear weapons installations (including Los Alamos, Albuquerque, and Oak Ridge National Laboratories) and notes recurring anomalous characteristics, including silent high- speed flight and radar detections indicating unconfirmed air speeds between 1,000 and 3,500 miles per hour. Emphasizing that the Air Force found no conclusive evidence regarding the nature or origin of the phenomena, Ruppelt underscores the national security need for a systematic physical data collection effort to better evaluate these sightings. Beginning of transcript. This medium has been declassified in compliance with applicable executive orders, statutes, and (Recording test) ...for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Now is the time for all good men... (Recording test) ...addressing them was by voice straight at the microphone and my mouth separated from the microphone by a distance of about 15 inches. I expect that the speaker will put out approximately this volume. And I will now, as before, turn around slowly and address my words toward the blackboard. This I am now doing, talking straight into the blackboard as if I were drawing some diagrams. I'm then going to turn around slowly again now to face the audience. I am separated from the microphone by a somewhat greater distance, as if I were slightly leaning backwards. (Recording test) ...play around the zero, that's the desirable level. If, for example, we turn the gain down... Now, now. So you see it's just about wide open and that'll pick everything in the room up. See how it jumps and is... Now let's see if we play it back. • "I can't hear you." • "Is there anything already on that tape now?"

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• "Yeah, there are a few things on the tape." • "Why don't you say something?" • "...begin to appear in about 1947. You're possibly familiar with them to a certain extent following the newspaper reports. The first ones were sighted by a Kenneth Arnold in June of 1947 out in Idaho. Now, I'll refer to them as 'these things' because we have no idea what we're dealing with. The newspapers and radio played them up to a great degree at that time and consequently introduced a little bit of, probably a little bit of mass hysteria or something like that into the problem. They flared up for about, oh, spasmodically for about two years and then the things died down to a certain extent. The Air Force took over this project soon after the first sighting because the public demanded an explanation of these objects. In 19... August of 1949, the Air Force came out with a report, supposedly a final report on this, where they reached a few conclusions. Now they had some specialists in certain fields working on this problem, and you might be interested in knowing who they were. There's a Dr. J. A. Hynek, an astronomer at Ohio State, Dr. G. Valley of the Scientific Advisory Board, a Dr. Fitz of the Aeromedical, I believe he was a psychologist, the RAND Corporation, Air Weather Service, Cambridge Field Station, and the U.S. Department of Commerce Weather Bureau. All those people took the reports— they had about 300 reports at that time—they took the reports, read them over, came up with their conclusions. Although their conclusions varied to a certain extent, they all agreed that they didn't know exactly what they were. However, there were obviously no direct threat to the United States, so they didn't pay too much more attention to them. The Air Force came up with several conclusions in that report. One of them was it was a mild case of mass hysteria due to, we might say, war nerves; the war had just been over. Some of them were due to psychopathological people, or nuts, something like that trying to create an excitement or get publicity or pure do a pure hoax. And the other one was that they were due to misinterpretation of conventional objects. Well, since that time, several years has passed, and we've been able to go back and review these conclusions a little bit. We've been able to drop out all except the misinterpretation of conventional objects. Going back, we have approximately 800 cases now on record, and only about 2% of those are actual hoaxes or psychopathological people who just don't know what they see. The misinterpretation of known objects is still, of course, a large factor. I mean, that could possibly account for all of them. However, it's a little bit doubtful. We've gone through these reports and come up with the fact that about 20% are very good reports offered by very reliable people and are just absolutely no conclusions can be drawn. The mass hysteria factor has gone out because the newspapers haven't played this up for the last approximately three years. There's occasional flurries, but nothing to get excited about at all, and still the reports continue to come in. We dropped this project in 1949, as I said, as a special project and have been handling this information as regular intelligence material since that time.