Department of the Air Force Committee to Review Project Bluebook, 1966-1967

This file covers a turning point in the Air Force’s handling of UFOs. In 1966–67 an ad hoc committee of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board reviewed Project Blue Book, the program that had been logging and explaining sightings since 1952, and recommended handing selected cases to outside scientists.

What the committee recommended

The panel’s central advice was that the Air Force should contract a team of scientists drawn from universities to look closely at a selection of sightings, rather than relying on Blue Book’s small in-house staff alone. The file records the committee’s discussions as well as its recommendation, and notes that the Air Force accepted it.

Where it led

This review is often called the O’Brien Committee, after its chairman, the physicist Brian O’Brien. Its recommendation produced the University of Colorado study led by Edward Condon, whose final report — the Condon Report — concluded that further UFO study was unlikely to advance science. That conclusion, in turn, was the basis on which the Air Force closed Blue Book in 1969. Records like these show an intermediate step on the way to that shutdown: a scientific review that first asked for more study, not less.