Hynek had also informed the UN committee about a study inaugurated by CNES, the French national space center, carried out by scientists from many disciplines. He remarked that the resulting case studies were “exemplary and far superior to the previous studies in other countries… the implications for science and the public at large of this French investigation are profound.”[145] The official French government agency GEPAN had just been formed within CNES under the direction of Yves Sillard, as part of a natural and logical response to a scientific, space-related problem that needed more research. At the same time, efforts were also under way in America to create a new UFO investigation within our own national space agency, NASA. But in America, it wasn’t so simple—even when the request came to NASA from the very highest office in the land: the president of the United States. Unbeknownst to most Americans, even President Carter could not get the publicly funded agency to look at the UFO evidence and see if perhaps, just maybe, an investigative body within NASA was warranted.
Carter had had his own UFO sighting in 1969, before he became governor of Georgia. In 1973, while governor, he filled out a two-page reporting form by hand, in response to a request from a civilian UFO research group. According to his report, he was just about to give a speech at a meeting in Leary, Georgia, on an early October evening. He and ten members of the Leary Georgia Lions Club watched a bright, self-luminous object, at times as large as the moon. For over ten minutes, it changed colors and “came close, moved away, came close and then moved away,” and at other times stood still; then it “disappeared.”[146]
A year and a half after Carter’s election as president in 1977, his science advisor, Frank Press, wrote to NASA administrator Robert Frosch recommending that NASA set up a “a small panel of inquiry” to see if there were any “new significant findings” since the Condon report. “The focal point for the UFO question ought to be NASA,”[147] Press wrote, and Frosch’s initial response was enthusiastic. “A panel of inquiry such as you suggest might possibly discover new significant findings,” he replied in September. “It would certainly generate current interest and could lead to the designation of NASA as the focal point for UFO matters.” He suggested that NASA name a “project officer”[148] to review UFO reports from the last ten years and make a recommendation. The White House concurred without delay.[149]
The U.S. Air Force, which had publicly declared UFOs not worthy of investigation, seemed to have deeply rooted hesitations about the Carter administration’s request that NASA initiate a new inquiry. Colonel Charles E. Senn, chief of the Community Relations Division at the Air Force, stated in a letter addressed to NASA’s Lieutenant General Duward L. Crow, “I sincerely hope that you are successful in preventing a reopening of UFO investigations.”[150] There is no record to indicate to what extent this or any other pressure from the Air Force influenced developments within NASA in response to Frank Press’s request on behalf of Carter. Some NASA employees had reservations as well.
After a fairly lengthy series of letters, memos, and inquiries made through various levels of the hierarchical NASA bureaucracy, the agency turned down the president of the United States in December 1977—without giving a project officer a chance to review the accumulated data. Frosch said that NASA needed “bona fide physical evidence from credible sources… tangible or physical evidence available for thorough laboratory analysis” in order to do so. Due to the absence of such evidence, he said, “we have not been able to devise a sound scientific procedure for investigating these phenomena.” Therefore, he proposed that no steps be taken to “establish a research activity in this area or to convene a symposium on this subject.”[151]
Dr. Richard C. Henry, a prominent professor of astrophysics at Johns Hopkins University, was then deputy director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division and involved in the decision-making process. In a 1988 published essay, Henry takes issue with Frosch’s claim of “an absence of tangible or physical evidence.” He says there was an abundance of relevant evidence at the time, a situation that he, as head of the Astrophysics Division, was certainly aware of.
Henry says Frosch’s statement denying the existence of a sound scientific protocol was simply false. “The National Academy of Sciences endorsed the Condon study of UFOs, and specifically endorsed their procedures (protocol). It hardly does for us to say no sound protocol is possible!” he wrote in a memo to NASA space science administrator Noel Hinners. “The point is that
Clearly, NASA appears to be an unlikely home for an American UFO agency. But what about the FAA? This agency seems to play a very different role in relationship to UFOs than the civil aviation departments of western European and South American countries, despite its mandate to protect our skies. We must remember that in 2006, the FAA informed the pilots and other aviation witnesses to the disc hovering over O’Hare Airport that it was actually weather, even though the weather was quite normal, it was daylight, and all weather data was recorded through standard procedures. When pressed, the FAA went a step further and attributed the sighting to a hole- punch cloud—a specific and quite rare weather phenomenon that requires freezing temperatures to occur—despite the fact that the temperatures at O’Hare that afternoon were well above freezing. Such irresponsible statements serve to discourage witnesses from filing reports, which would normally be the first step in conducting any sort of investigation.[153] Unfortunately, the FAA seems like an even less likely candidate than NASA to take on UFOs at this point.
A comparison with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) of our closest ally, the United Kingdom, is in order. There, it is
After Captain Ray Bowyer and his passengers observed a pair of brilliant objects over the English Channel in 2007, the first thing Bowyer did upon landing was fax a report to the CAA, following standard required procedure. There was no attempt by his airline or anyone else to hush up the story, which was reported by the BBC.[154] In fact, many CAA files on unsolved cases involving pilots, air traffic controllers, and ground crews have been released. For example, in 1999, a BBC news item reported that “a UFO that narrowly avoided colliding with a passenger jet flying from London’s Heathrow Airport has baffled aviation experts.” A metallic object passed within twenty feet of the aircraft, but for some reason was not picked up on radar. The BBC reports that the pilot filed a near-miss report (an “airprox”) and that “a report by the Civil Aviation Authority found no explanation for the incident which has also confounded local military experts and local police.”[155]
Imagine if the FAA had made such a statement about the equally radarless O’Hare incident. Being used to a saner approach, Captain Bowyer found the U.S. “non-reporting system” hard to imagine, because the CAA makes no distinction among the possible causes of distress on aircraft. How odd, upon reflection, that America’s FAA seems to discount one rare hazard—unidentified flying objects—and recognizes all others, even if the potential impact could be the same. The FAA provides no reporting forms for these kinds of sightings—although it does offer report forms for volcanic activity and bird strikes, and a detailed “laser beam exposure questionnaire.”
The FAA does not try to hide its discrimination. As a matter of policy, the agency has informed its employees that it wants nothing to do with reports of UFOs or anything anomalous, no matter how severe the danger to the aircraft or the lives within it. The 2010 FAA Aeronautical Information Manual, [156] in Section 6 on “Safety, Accident, and Hazard Reports,” states that “persons wanting to report UFO/unexplained phenomena activity” should contact a collection center such as Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, a new research organization focusing on novel and emerging spacecraft technologies, or the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC), a civilian group with a UFO hotline and reporting forms that keeps careful records of UFO sightings.
With unintentional humor the manual goes on to say that “if concern is expressed that life or property might be endangered” by the UFO, “report the activity[157] to the local law enforcement department.” Does this mean the local police department over whose jurisdiction the jet is flying at the time it is endangered at, say, 35,000 feet above the ground? Or the nearest police force to an airport that might have a UFO hovering over it? Assumedly, such illogical directives would be changed if our country ever set up a UFO agency.
Two witnesses to the O’Hare incident did just as the manual suggested: They called NUFORC and submitted
