The Condon Committee was the informal name of the University of Colorado UFO Project, a group funded by the United States Air Force from 1966 to 1968 at the University of Colorado to study unidentified flying objects under the direction of physicist Edward Condon. The result of its work, formally titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, and known as the Condon Report, appeared in 1968.
After examining hundreds of UFO files from the Air Force's Project Blue Book and from the civilian UFO groups National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) and Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), and investigating sightings reported during the life of the project, the Committee produced a Final Report that said the study of UFOs was unlikely to yield major scientific discoveries.
The report's conclusions received a mixed reception from scientists and academic journals. The report has been cited as a decisive factor in the generally low level of interest in UFO activity among academics since that time. According to a principal critic of the Report, it is "the most influential public document concerning the scientific status of this UFO problem. Hence, all current scientific work on the UFO problem must refer to the Condon Report".
Background Beginning in 1947 with Project Sign, which then became Project Grudge and finally Project Blue Book, the U.S. Air Force conducted formal studies of UFOs, a subject of considerable public and some governmental interest. Blue Book had come under increasing criticism in the 1960s. Growing numbers of critics—including U.S. politicians, newspaper writers, UFO researchers, scientists and some of the general public—were suggesting that Blue Book was conducting shoddy, unsupported research or perpetrating a cover up.Clark, Jerome, The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial, Visible Ink, 1998, pp. 593–604, . The Air Force did not want to continue its studies but did not want a cessation of studies to provoke additional cover-up charges. UFOs had become so controversial that no other government agency was willing to take on further UFO studies.
Following a wave of UFO reports in 1965, astronomer and Blue Book consultant J. Allen Hynek wrote a letter to the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board (AFSAB) suggesting that a panel convene to re-examine Blue Book. The AFSAB agreed and the committee it formed, chaired by Brian O'Brien, convened for one day in February, 1966, and suggested UFO studies could be undertaken "in more detail and depth than had been possible to date" and that the U.S. Air Force should work "with a few selected universities to provide scientific teams" to study UFOs. The committee suggested that about 100 well-documented UFO sightings should be studied annually, with about 10 man-days devoted to each case.Saunders and Harkins, 25
At a Congressional UFO hearing on April 5, 1966, Air Force Secretary Harold Brown defended the Air Force's UFO studies and repeated the O'Brien Committee's call for more studies. Hynek repeated his call for "a civilian panel of physical and social scientists" to "examine the UFO problem critically for the express purpose of determining whether a major problem exists."Hynek, J. Allen,The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, Henry Regnery Company, 1972, 192–244 Shortly after the hearing, the Air Force announced it was seeking one or more universities to undertake a study of UFOs. The Air Force wanted to have several groups, but it took some time to find even a single school willing to accept the Air Force's offer. Both Hynek and James E. McDonald suggested their own campuses, Northwestern University and the University of Arizona, and others suggested astronomer Donald Menzel. All were judged too closely allied with one position or another.Dick, Biological, 292. Hynek had a long association with the Air Force, McDonald was pro-UFO and Menzel anti-UFO. Several universities declined to participate, including Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Walter Orr Roberts, director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and 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 among the best known and most distinguished scientists of his time. Condon's tenacious encounters with the House Unamerican Activities Committee and other government Loyalty Boards in the 1940s and 1950s made him "almost legendary" among fellow scientists.Saunders and Harkins, 33 On Condon's behalf, Robert J. Low, an assistant dean of the university's graduate program, explored faculty reaction to the proposed project and found it mixed and wary. He also tried to reassure those who found the enterprise unworthy of scientific investigation. Low told the Denver Post that the project had met the university's acceptance threshold by the narrowest of margins and was accepted largely because it was difficult to say no to the Air Force. Some have suggested that finances were factor in Colorado's decision to accept the Air Force's offer of $313,000 for the project. Condon dismissed this suggestion, noting that $313,000 was a rather modest budget for an undertaking scheduled to last more than a year with a staff of over a dozen.Saunders and Harkins, 29 Total funding later rose above $500,000.Dick, Biological, 293
On October 6, 1966, the University of Colorado agreed to undertake the UFO study, with Condon as director, Low as coordinator, and Stuart W. Cook, Franklin E. Roach, David R. Saunders and William A. Scott as principal or co-principal investigators.Final Report, X: "DAVID R. SAUNDERS (Principal Investigator) is professor of psychology at the University of Colorado and assistant director of its Department of Testing and Counseling." The Air Force announced its selection of Condon and the University of Colorado in October 1966. Other committee members included astronomer William K. Hartmann; psychologists Michael Wertheimer, Dan Culbertson and graduate student James Wadsworth; chemist Roy Craig; electrical engineer Norman Levine and physicist Frederick Ayer. Many other scientists or experts served in part-time and temporary roles or as consultants.Final Report, Appendix X Public response to the Committee's announcement was generally positive.Jacobs, 225, "optimism on all sides" Hynek characterized Condon's perspective towards UFOs as "basically negative", but he also assumed that Condon's opinions would change once he familiarized himself with evidence in some of the more puzzling UFO cases. NICAP's Donald Keyhoe was publicly supportive, but privately expressed fears that the Air Force would be controlling things from behind the scenes. That a scientist of Condon's standing would involve himself with UFO research heartened some academics who had long expressed interest in the subject, such as atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald.
When the project was announced, The Nation, commented: "If Dr. Condon and his associates come up with anything less than the little green men from Mars, they will be crucified."Craig, 250
Committee work In November 1966, retired USMC Major Donald Keyhoe and Richard H. Hall, both of NICAP, briefed the panel. They agreed to share NICAP's research files and to improve the collection of UFO reports. The committee also secured help from APRO, another civilian UFO research group. The committee moved slowly, hampered by disagreements about the use of fundsSaunders and Harkins, 77 and methodology. By hiring people with no prior position on UFOs, the committee staff lacked expertise and subject matter expertise. One committee member suggested filming UFOs using stereo cameras mounted with diffraction gratings in order to study the spectrum of light emitted by UFOs. This had been attempted some fifteen years earlier following a specific suggestion regarding UFOs made by Joseph Kaplan in 1954, but was quickly judged impractical after a number of such cameras were distributed to Air Force bases.Hynek, 225 As they began their analyses, committee members usually worked without coordination with one another. Individuals embraced diverse approaches, especially with respect to the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH).Jacobs, 228–230
In late January 1967, Condon stated in a lecture that he thought the government should not study UFOs because the subject was 'nonsense', adding, "but I'm not supposed to reach that conclusion for another year." One NICAP member resigned from NICAP in protest and Saunders confronted Condon to express his concern that NICAP's withdrawal would eliminate a valuable source of case files and produce damaging publicity.
Low memo controversy In July 1967, James E. McDonald, a confirmed believer in the validity of UFO sightings, learned from a committee member about a memo Low had written on August 9, 1966, in which he reassured two University of Colorado administrators that they could expect the study to demonstrate that UFO observations had no basis in reality. "Our study would be conducted almost entirely by non-believers who, though they couldn't possibly prove a negative result, could and probably would add an impressive body of thick evidence that there is no reality to the observations. The trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but, to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of non-believers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer."Craig, 194–195 McDonald, after locating a copy of the memo in the project's open files, wrote to Condon, quoting a few lines from it.