CONDON REPORT

Opening

On 6 October 1966, after the Michigan "swamp gas" uproar and a congressional hearing, the University of Colorado agreed to run an Air Force-funded scientific study of UFOs. The director was Edward U. Condon, a distinguished physicist and former head of the National Bureau of Standards. The contract started at $313,000 and eventually passed $500,000.

The study's report, released in January 1969, concluded that further UFO research was unlikely to advance science. Within the year the Air Force used it to close Project Blue Book. The trouble was that the report's own case chapters left about a quarter of the cases unexplained, and a leaked memo suggested the conclusion had been expected from the start.

Timeline

9 August 1966Before the contract is signed, university administrator Robert J. Low writes a memo on how to present the project to the public and to scientists.

6 October 1966Colorado accepts the contract.

Late January 1967In a public lecture, Condon calls the study of UFOs nonsense, then adds that he is not supposed to reach that conclusion for another year.

Early 1968Staff members David Saunders and Norman Levine are dismissed after the Low memo reaches the atmospheric physicist James McDonald, a critic of the project. Administrative assistant Mary Lou Armstrong resigns soon after.

14 May 1968Look magazine publishes John G. Fuller's "Flying Saucer Fiasco", quoting the Low memo and calling the project a $500,000 trick.

November 1968The report is delivered to the Air Force. A National Academy of Sciences panel chaired by the Yale astronomer Gerald Clemence reviews it and endorses its methods and conclusions.

January 1969The report is released as Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, running to 1,485 pages in hardcover and 965 in the Bantam paperback.

17 December 1969Project Blue Book is closed, with the report cited as the reason.

November 1970A subcommittee of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics agrees that little of value was found, but finds no basis in the report for Condon's prediction that nothing of scientific value would come of further study.

Key figures

Edward Condon wrote the conclusions and recommendations himself. His earlier clashes with the House Un-American Activities Committee had made him a hero to many scientists, which gave his name weight.

Robert Low was the project coordinator whose memo became the case's most quoted document.

David Saunders, a psychologist on the staff, was fired and went on to co-write UFOs? Yes! Where the Condon Committee Went Wrong, published before the final report.

J. Allen Hynek, Blue Book's consultant, became the report's best-known critic, pointing out that the committee had been unable to explain more than a quarter of the cases it examined.

Physical and documentary trail

What exists: the contract, the Low memo, the Look article, the report itself, the National Academy of Sciences review, the AIAA critique, and the Air Force's closure announcement. The report is unusually easy to check because the case chapters and the summary sit in the same book. What is not public in full is the project's internal correspondence over how the summary was drafted.

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 nonbelievers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer.

Things you might not know

• Condon called it early. A year before the report, he told an audience that UFO study was nonsense and that he was not supposed to reach that conclusion yet.
• The paperback came first. Bantam's edition is dated 1968, and the report is still best known in that cheap, thick format.
• The book argues with its summary. The astronomer William Hartmann's chapter on the 1950 McMinnville, Oregon photographs found them consistent with a real, artificial flying disc seen by two witnesses.
• A critic beat the report to print. Saunders's book reached shops before the committee's own findings.
• Condon was a Cold War target himself. In 1948 a House Un-American Activities subcommittee called him one of the weakest links in American atomic security, a fight that made him famous among physicists long before UFOs.
• It ended more than one programme. When Blue Book closed on 17 December 1969, it and its predecessors had logged 12,618 reports since 1947.

Competing explanations

A genuine study that found little of value. The case for this reading is strong: real scientists examined real cases, most were explained, and both the National Academy of Sciences and the AIAA agreed nothing of great scientific value had been found.

A study written to a conclusion. The Low memo, Condon's 1967 remarks, and the dismissals give this reading documentary support. Its strongest form does not say the case work was faked, only that the summary was more certain than the cases inside the book.

Both at once. Many historians land here: a competent study whose director had made up his mind, producing case chapters that did not always match his summary.

Later life of the case

The report is still the reference point for official UFO study in the United States. Every later inquiry, including the Pentagon's programmes after 2017, has been measured against the question it raised: whether a government study can close a subject that its own data leaves open.

Finding

The Condon Report is a real scientific study with real case work, and most of the cases it examined were explained. The record also shows that its outcome was anticipated before the work began, and that its summary claimed more certainty than its own case chapters support. Both things are documented, and neither cancels the other.

What still will not resolve: the internal drafting history of Condon's summary, and the roughly one case in four that the report itself left unexplained.