The Robertson Panel
UFOs/Alien ExpertBy Billy Booth
Another UFO study group was formed by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1952. This group was called the Robertson Panel, and was primarily formed because of the heavy amount of UFO sightings in and around the Washington D.C. area. The group was informed of many military activities, and intelligence issues, therefore the group was labeled "secret."
The Panel would determine that UFOs could, for the most part, be easily explained by the misidentification of everyday aerial objects. The group would also advocate a campaign to "debunk" UFOs. Their desire was for the public to lose interest in UFOs, and to be put bluntly, quit calling in reports.
Actually, the growing public interest in UFOs, and incoming queries were having an impact on government facilities, and the Robertson Panel desire was to quite this activity. According to some group members, this public interest had reached "mass hysteria" levels, and it was thought that our enemies, especially the Soviet Union, could capitalize on the problem.
The group was under the leadership of Howard Percy Robertson, who was physicist, and a CIA employee. The groups first meeting was on January 14, 1953. The group members were:
Louis Alvarez, physicist (and later, a Nobel Prize winner)
Frederick C. Durant, missile expert
Samuel A. Goudsmit, Brookhaven National Laboratories physicist
Thornton Page, astrophysicist, deputy director of Johns Hopkins’ Operations Research Office.
Lloyd Berkner, physicist and J. Allen Hynek, astronomer, were associate panel members.
The group met for four days. They studied film and went over various reports. Most of the group members were skeptics, yet some very interesting conclusions were reached.
On day one, two classic UFO films were shown: one, the 1950 Montana film, and second, the 1952 Delbert Newhouse film, which was taken in Utah. Two Navy film and photograph experts presented their conclusions: both films depicted objects unidentifiable by any conventional means. Naturally, this went against the status quo of the mindset of the majority of the group. Also, Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt gave a summary of Air Force attempts to study the UFO mystery.
On the second day of the meeting, Ruppelt concluded his presentation, Dr. J. Allen Hynek discussed the Battelle efforts, and the entire panel reviewed Air Force efforts at researching UFO sightings.
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