UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 03 · JUNE 12, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · CIA-UAP-002Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, Report, 1952-1953
This 42-page file holds the best-known government study of the early UFO era: the report of the CIA’s 1953 scientific panel on UFOs, usually called the Robertson Panel after its chairman, the Caltech physicist H. P. Robertson. The CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence convened it; the panel met January 14–17, 1953, and signed its report on the last day.
Who sat and what they reviewed
Besides Robertson, the signatures are those of Luis W. Alvarez, Lloyd V. Berkner, S. A. Goudsmit and Thornton Page. The astronomer J. Allen Hynek and the rocket specialist Frederick C. Durant are listed as associate members. The evidence list includes seventy-five case histories from 1951–1952 chosen by the Air Technical Intelligence Center as the best documented, progress reports from Projects Grudge and Blue Book, charts of balloon launch sites and flight paths, the Tremonton, Utah, and Great Falls, Montana, films — and, for comparison, a film of seagulls in bright sunlight.
The panel saw no direct physical threat and no sign of hostile foreign craft. The danger it named was the flood of reports itself, and it urged agencies to remove the subject’s “aura of mystery” and to train personnel to recognize and reject false indications quickly.
How the report was distributed
The cover letters show the report traveling. In March 1953 Richard D. Drain, secretary of the Intelligence Advisory Committee, sent copies to the Secretary of Defense, to Federal Civil Defense Administrator Val Peterson and to C. D. Jackson at the White House, and the civil defense agency replied asking for a conference on applying the recommendations. The Pentagon’s copy is filed separately as DOW-UAP-D085, and the Air Force’s own Tremonton file is DOW-UAP-D102. See also Project Blue Book.
The official description
From war.gov/UFO, released June 12, 2026, quoted in full
This file contains correspondence and reports dated 1952–1953 from the Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, convened by the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence. The panel’s primary conclusion was that “flying saucers” did not pose a direct physical threat to the national security of the United States. The panel found no evidence that these phenomena were attributable to hostile foreign artifacts or indicated a need to revise existing scientific concepts.
However, the panel identified a significant indirect threat stemming from the public’s fascination with the subject. The panel concluded that the high volume of reports, encouraged by a "sensationalist press," could overwhelm and clog vital intelligence and communication channels, potentially distracting from genuine threats. Furthermore, they warned that a “morbid national psychology” could be exploited by adversaries to incite “hysterical behavior and harmful distrust of duly constituted authority.” To mitigate these risks, the panel recommended an official policy of “debunking” to “strip the UFO subject of its mystery,” alongside a training initiative for military personnel to better recognize and filter out misidentified objects, thereby reducing communication “noise” and allowing the national security apparatus to focus on more "legitimate defense concerns."