The Condon Committee was the nickname for the University of Colorado UFO Project, a group supported by the United States Air Force from 1966 to 1968 at the University of Colorado. The group studied unidentified flying objects under the leadership of physicist Edward Condon. Its findings were published in a report titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, also known as the Condon Report, in 1968.
The group reviewed hundreds of UFO files from the Air Force's Project Blue Book and from civilian organizations, including the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO). They also examined UFO sightings reported during the project's active years. Their final report concluded that studying UFOs was unlikely to lead to important scientific findings.
Scientists and academic journals had mixed reactions to the report. Some believe it contributed to the limited interest in UFO research among academics since that time. A major critic of the report stated it is "the most influential public document about the scientific status of the UFO problem. Therefore, all current scientific work on the UFO problem must reference the Condon Report."
Background
In 1947, the U.S. Air Force started a program called Project Sign. Later, the program was renamed Project Grudge and then Project Blue Book. These projects studied UFOs, a topic that many people and some government officials were interested in. By the 1960s, Blue Book faced more criticism. Many people, including politicians, newspaper writers, scientists, and members of the public, believed the Air Force was not doing proper research or hiding important information. The Air Force wanted to stop its studies but feared that ending them might make people think it was hiding the truth. Because UFOs were so controversial, no other government group was willing to take over the research.
In 1965, after a large number of UFO reports, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who worked with Blue Book, wrote to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (AFSAB) to suggest forming a group to review Blue Book’s work. AFSAB agreed and created a committee led by Brian O’Brien. The committee met for one day in February 1966 and recommended that UFO studies should be done more thoroughly and that the Air Force should work with a few universities to study UFOs. The group suggested studying about 100 well-documented UFO sightings each year, with about 10 hours of research per case.
On April 5, 1966, Air Force Secretary Harold Brown defended the UFO studies and supported the O’Brien Committee’s recommendation for more research. Hynek asked for a group of scientists to examine UFOs carefully to determine if the topic was a major issue. Soon after, the Air Force announced it was looking for universities to study UFOs. It wanted several groups, but it took time to find even one school willing to accept the offer. Hynek, James E. McDonald, and others suggested universities like Northwestern University and the University of Arizona. However, these schools were seen as too closely connected to one side of the debate. Other schools, including Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley, refused to join. Walter Orr Roberts and Donald Menzel suggested physicist Edward Condon of the University of Colorado.
In the summer of 1966, Condon agreed to consider the Air Force’s offer. He was a well-known and respected scientist. His past experiences with government loyalty boards in the 1940s and 1950s made him famous among scientists. Robert J. Low, an assistant dean at the University of Colorado, checked how faculty felt about the project and found mixed opinions. He also tried to convince people that the project was worth doing. Low told the Denver Post that the project was barely accepted because it was hard to refuse the Air Force’s request. Some people thought money was a factor in the University of Colorado’s decision to accept the Air Force’s offer of $313,000. Condon disagreed, saying the budget was small for a project lasting over a year with a team of more than a dozen people. Later, the total funding increased to over $500,000.
On October 6, 1966, the University of Colorado agreed to study UFOs, with Condon as the leader, Low as the coordinator, and several scientists as main researchers. The Air Force announced its choice of Condon and the University of Colorado in October 1966. Other members of the team included astronomer William K. Hartmann, psychologists Michael Wertheimer and Dan Culbertson, chemist Roy Craig, electrical engineer Norman Levine, and physicist Frederick Ayer. Many scientists helped in part-time or temporary roles. Public reaction to the announcement was mostly positive. Hynek said Condon had a negative view of UFOs but believed Condon’s opinions might change after studying difficult cases. Donald Keyhoe of NICAP supported the project publicly but worried the Air Force might control it secretly. Some scientists, like James E. McDonald, were happy that a respected scientist like Condon was involved.
When the project was announced, The Nation magazine said, “If Dr. Condon and his team find anything less than aliens from Mars, they will be criticized harshly.”
Committee work
In November 1966, retired USMC Major Donald Keyhoe and Richard H. Hall, both members of NICAP, presented information to a panel. They agreed to share NICAP's research files and improve the collection of UFO reports. The committee also received help from APRO, another civilian UFO research group. The committee worked slowly, slowed by disagreements about how to use money and research methods. By hiring people with no prior experience studying UFOs, the committee lacked the necessary knowledge. One member suggested using stereo cameras with diffraction gratings to study the light from UFOs. This idea had been tried about fifteen years earlier after a suggestion by Joseph Kaplan in 1954, but it was later considered impractical after cameras were sent to Air Force bases. As the committee began its work, members often worked without coordinating with each other. Individuals used different methods, especially when considering the idea that UFOs might be from outer space.
In late January 1967, Condon said in a lecture that the government should not study UFOs because the subject was "nonsense," though he added he would not reach that conclusion for another year. A NICAP member resigned in protest, and Saunders expressed concern that NICAP's withdrawal would remove a valuable source of UFO reports and cause bad publicity.
In July 1967, James E. McDonald, who believed UFO sightings were real, learned from a committee member about a memo Low wrote on August 9, 1966. In the memo, Low reassured two University of Colorado administrators that the study would show UFO sightings had no real basis. He wrote that the study would be led by people who did not believe in UFOs, and their work would create strong evidence that UFO sightings were not real. McDonald found a copy of the memo in the project's files and sent it to Condon with quotes from it.
In response to the memo, NICAP ended its relationship with the committee in April 1968, and Keyhoe shared copies of Low's memo with others. A magazine article titled "Flying Saucer Fiasco" by John G. Fuller in May 1968 described interviews with Saunders and Levine and called the project a "$500,000 trick." Fuller was a journalist who believed UFO sightings were credible. Condon said the article contained "falsehoods and misrepresentations." Scientific journals reported the controversy. Industrial Research published Low's memo, and Scientific Research interviewed Saunders and Levine, who said they were considering suing Condon for firing them unfairly. They claimed Condon used "unscientific" methods. Condon called their claims "libelous" and threatened to sue them. When the American Association for the Advancement of Science covered the controversy in its journal Science, Condon initially agreed to an interview but later refused. He resigned from the AAAS in protest after the article was published without his input. Congressional Representative J. Edward Roush said the article raised "grave doubts" about the project's scientific value and objectivity. He asked the General Accounting Office to investigate the study, but the GAO refused. Roush held a hearing focused on critics of the project and later joined NICAP's board. Low resigned from the project in May 1968.
Later critics of the committee's work said the memo was not significant. David Saunders, a committee member, said calling Low a "plotter or conspirator" was unfair. Hynek wrote that Low wanted the university to get the contract and convince administrators to accept it. Project investigator Roy Craig said the memo did not concern him because Condon had not seen it for eighteen months and it did not reflect his views. Condon wrote in the project's Final Report that the memo's focus on the "psychology and sociology" of UFO witnesses showed Low misunderstood the project.
Despite NICAP's withdrawal, members of its Early Warning Network continued to report UFO sightings to investigators, as did journalists. Scientists who expected the committee to oppose continued government UFO research published their own refutation before the Final Report. Called UFO's? Yes!, the work by Saunders questioned whether the CIA wanted to distract the public from UFOs. It used three cases to argue for extraterrestrial activity. Roy Craig later described each case as "utter nonsense," "highly suspect," and "unexplained but very weak."
Committee Report
The committee gave its report to the Air Force in November 1968, and the Air Force shared it with the public in January 1969. The report had 1,485 pages in hardcover and 965 pages in paperback. It grouped UFO cases into five categories: reports from before the committee met, new reports, cases with photographs, cases with radar or visual evidence, and reports from astronauts. Some UFO cases belonged to more than one category. Condon wrote 6 pages of "conclusions and recommendations," a 43-page "summary," and a 50-page history of UFO research over the past 20 years.
In the "Conclusions and Recommendations" section, Condon wrote: "We believe nothing from the study of UFOs over the past 21 years has helped science. After reviewing the available information, we think further large-scale study of UFOs is unlikely to help science advance." He also suggested that the government should not create a program to study UFO reports. He explained that scientists must evaluate UFO evidence themselves and that the report’s recommendation against more research "may not always be true." He advised that government groups and private organizations "should be open to considering UFO research proposals carefully, without bias." The report noted that gaps in scientific knowledge about "atmospheric optics, including radio wave propagation, and atmospheric electricity" might be helped by further UFO research.
The report included 59 case studies, but for legal reasons, the locations of the cases were changed. Walter Sullivan, a science editor for the New York Times, wrote in the published version that the cases "read like a modern, real-life collection of Sherlock Holmes episodes." The cases ranged from very confusing to clearly not serious. The reader learns about the scientific method, even though many cases are hard to explain. Six chapters discussed physical evidence, such as electromagnetic effects and visual or radar images. One chapter covered observations made by U.S. astronauts.
In Case 2 of Section IV, Chapter 2, the report described the 1956 Lakenheath-Bentwaters incident: "Although natural or conventional explanations cannot be ruled out, the chance of such explanations seems low. The probability that at least one real UFO was involved appears to be fairly high."
Before the report was finished, the Air Force asked the National Academy of Sciences to review the report’s scope, methods, and findings. A panel led by Yale astronomer Gerald M. Clemence studied the report for six weeks and concluded: "Based on current knowledge, the least likely explanation for UFOs is that they are from intelligent beings outside Earth. No high priority in UFO investigations is needed based on data from the past 20 years."
After the report was published, the Air Force ended Project Blue Book, which had been started in March 1952, on December 17, 1969.
Assessments
The Report received different opinions from scientists and academic journals, while the news media mostly praised it. Many newspapers, magazines, and journals published reviews or editorials that supported the Condon Report. Some compared continuing to believe in UFOs to believing the Earth is flat. Others believed interest in UFOs would decrease over time and become barely remembered. Science, the official publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, stated, "The Colorado Study is unquestionably the most thorough and sophisticated investigation of the unclear UFO phenomenon ever conducted."
The March 8, 1969 issue of Nature gave the Condon Report a generally positive review but questioned why so much effort was spent on the topic: "The Colorado project is a monumental achievement, but one of perhaps misapplied ingenuity. It is more like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, except the nuts will be immune to its impact." On January 8, 1969, the New York Times titled its coverage: "U.F.O. Finding: No Visits From Afar." The article stated that the project's final report on UFOs "has uncovered no evidence that they are intelligently guided spacecraft from beyond the Earth."
Critics repeatedly argued their points but did not receive government support. One described the Report as "a rather unorganized collection of independent articles on different subjects, a minority of which dealt with UFOs." Hynek described the Report as "long, not well organized, and hard to follow," and wrote that "less than half…was focused on investigating UFO reports." In the April 14, 1969 issue of Scientific Research, Robert L. M. Baker, Jr. wrote that the Condon Committee's Report "seems to justify scientific investigation along many general and specialized areas." In the December 1969 issue of Physics Today, committee consultant Gerald Rothberg wrote that he had thoroughly examined about 100 UFO cases, three or four of which left him puzzled. He thought this "residue of unexplained reports [indicated a] legitimate scientific controversy." Critics claimed that Condon's case summaries were incorrect or misleading, with unclear reports "hidden" among confirmed cases.
In December 1969, physicist James E. McDonald called the Report "inadequate" and said "it represents an examination of only a tiny fraction of the most puzzling UFO reports of the past two decades, and that its level of scientific argumentation is wholly unsatisfactory." In a 1969 issue of the American Journal of Physics, astronomer Thornton Page (who believed the phenomenon had a sociological basis) wrote of the report: "Intelligent laymen can (and do) point out the logical flaw in Condon's conclusion based on a statistically small (and selected) sample. Even in this sample a consistent pattern can be recognized; it is ignored by the 'authorities,' who then compound their 'felony' by recommending that no further observational data be collected." Page had been a member of the Robertson Panel, which suggested UFOs should be debunked to reduce public interest.
In November 1970, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics generally agreed with Condon's suggestion that little of value had been uncovered by scientific UFO studies, but "did not find a basis in the report for [Condon's] prediction that nothing of scientific value will come of further studies."
Astronomer J. Allen Hynek wrote that "The Condon Report settled nothing." He called Condon's introduction "clearly biased" and wrote that it "avoided mentioning that there was embedded within the report a remaining mystery; that the committee had been unable to provide adequate explanations for more than a quarter of the cases examined." Hynek argued that "Condon did not understand the nature and scope of the problem" he was studying and disagreed with the idea that only extraterrestrial life could explain UFO activity. By focusing on this hypothesis, he wrote, the Report "did not try to establish whether UFOs really constituted a problem for the scientist, whether physical or social."
Astrophysicist Peter A. Sturrock wrote that "critical reviews…came from scientists who had actually carried out research in the UFO area, while the laudatory reviews came from scientists who had not carried out such research." As an example, Sturrock noted a case in which an allegedly supersonic UFO did not produce a sonic boom. He noted that "we should not assume that a more advanced civilization could not find some way to travel with supersonic speeds without producing a sonic boom."