Quotes of note
“I know that neither Russia nor this country has anything even approaching such high speeds and maneuvers. Behind the scenes high ranking officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs, but through official secrecy and ridicule many citizens are led to believe that the unknown flying objects are nonsense.”
Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoeter, First Director of the CIA.
1960 NICAP press conference
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"When Prof. Peter Sturrock, a prominent Stanford University plasma physicist, conducted a survey of the membership of the American Astronomical Society he found that astronomers who spent time reading up on the UFO phenomenon developed more interest in it. If there were nothing to it, you would expect the opposite."
Bernard Haisch, Ph.D.,
Director of the California Institute For Physics and Astrophysics
[1998] "An international panel of scientists that convened to ponder the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors was not about to answer that question, but they said the physical evidence in some UFO sightings merits further serious scientific review." --- A.P. Release
See 1998 Scientific review of the UFO question
"The definitive resolution of the UFO enigma will not come about unless and until the problem is subjected to open and extensive scientific study by the normal procedures of established science. This requires a change in attitude primarily on the part of scientists and administrators in universities." (Sturrock, Peter A., Report on a Survey of the American Astronomical Society concerning the UFO Phenomenon, Stanford University Report SUIPR 68IR, 1977.)
"Although... the scientific community has tended to minimize the significance of the UFO phenomenon, certain individual scientists have argued that the phenomenon is both real and significant. Such views have been presented in the Hearings of the House Committee on Science and Astronautics [and elsewhere]. It is also notable that one major national scientific society, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, set up a subcommittee in 1967 to 'gain a fresh and objective perspective on the UFO phenomenon.'
In their public statements (but not necessarily in their private statements), scientists express a generally negative attitude towards the UFO problem, and it is interesting to try to understand this attitude. Most scientists have never had the occasion to confront evidence concerning the UFO phenomenon. To a scientist, the main source of hard information (other than his own experiments' observations) is provided by the scientific journals. With rare exceptions, scientific journals do not publish reports of UFO observations. The decision not to publish is made by the editor acting on the advice of reviewers. This process is self-reinforcing: the apparent lack of data confirms the view that there is nothing to the UFO phenomenon, and this view works against the presentation of relevant data." (Sturrock, Peter A., "An Analysis of the Condon Report on the Colorado UFO Project," Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 1, No. 1, 1987.)"
-- Dr. Peter A. Sturrock, Professor of Space Science and Astrophysics and Deputy Director of the Center for Space Sciences and Astrophysics at Stanford University; Director of the Skylab Workshop on Solar Flares in 1977
"During the years that I have been its consultant, the Air Force has consistently argued that UFO's were either hoaxes, hallucinations or misinterpretations of natural phenomena. For the most part I would agree with the Air Force. As a professional astronomer--I am chairman of the department of astronomy at Northwestern University--I have had no trouble explaining the vast majority of the reported sightings. But I cannot explain them all. Of the 15,000 cases that have come to my attention, several hundred are puzzling, and some of the puzzling incidents, perhaps one in 25, are bewildering. I have wanted to learn much more about these cases than I have been able to get from either the reports or the witnesses....Getting at the truth of "flying saucers" has been extraordinarily difficult because the subject automatically engenders such instantaneous reactions and passionate beliefs. Nearly all of my scientific colleagues, I regret to say, have scoffed at the reports of UFO's as so much balderdash, although this was a most unscientific reaction since virtually none of them had ever studied the evidence. Until recently my friends in the physical sciences wouldn't even discuss UFO's with me. The subject, in fact, rarely came up. My friends were obviously mystified as to how I, a scientist, could have gotten mixed up with "flying saucers" ---Saturday Evening Post: 1966
-- Dr. J. Allen Hynek: Professor emeritus and chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University. Earlier, he was director of the Lundheimer Astronomical Research Center at Northwestern. He has written astronomy books and articles that have appeared in numerous science journals, as well as an astronomy column for Science Digest magazine. He was chief scientist for NASA's satellite tracking program, and for twenty years was the scientific consultant to the United States Air Force in the investigation of the UFO phenomenon. He is credited with coining the phrase "close encounters of the third kind" and was Steven Spielberg's technical consultant on the film of that name. Dr. Hynek died in April 1986.
"The UFO was bouncing around the 747. [It] was a huge ball with lights running around it….Well, I’ve been involved in a lot of cover-ups with the FAA. When we gave the presentation to the Reagan staff, they had all those people swear that this never happened. But they never had me swear it never happened. I can tell you what I’ve seen with my own eyes. I’ve got a videotape. I’ve got the voice tape. I’ve got the reports that were filed that will confirm what I’ve been telling you."
John Callahan
FAA Division Chief of Accidents and Investigations
" I have no doubt that something landed at this U.S. Air Force base [Bentwaters] and I have no doubt that it has got the people concerned in to a considerable state. The Ministry of Defense has doggedly stuck to it's normal line, that nothing of defense interest took place. Either large numbers of people , including the commanding general at Bentwaters,were hallucinating, and for an American Air Force nuclear base , this is extremely dangerous - or what they say did happen.
In either of these circumstances, there can be only one answer - that it was of extreme defense interest to the U.K."
Admiral Lord Hill-Norton;
Former chief of the British Defense Staff
"I have frequently been asked why a person of my background—a former Chief of the Defense Staff, a former Chairman of the NATO Military Committee—why I think there is a cover-up [of] the facts about UFOs. I believe governments fear that if they did disclose those facts, people would panic. I don’t believe that at all. There is a serious possibility that we are being visited by people from outer space. It behooves us to find out who they are, where they come from, and what they want."
Admiral Lord Hill-Norton;
Former chief of the British Defense Staff
"A saucer flew right over [us], put down three landing gears, and landed out on the dry lakebed. [The cameramen] went out there with their cameras towards the UFO….I had a chance to hold [the film] up to the window. Good close-up shots. There was no doubt in my mind that it was made someplace other than on this earth."
Mercury & Gemini Astronaut, Colonel Gordon Cooper
"There is a [military] publication called JANAP 146E that has a section that says you will not reveal any information regarding the UFO phenomenon under penalty of $10,000 fine and ten years in jail. So the secret has been kept."
US Navy Pilot, Lieutenant Frederick Fox
"What I found [in doing research for the book Project Delta] was compelling evidence to claim that most of these aerial objects far exceeded the terrestrial technology of the era in which they were seen. I was forced to conclude that there is a great likelihood that Earth is being visited by highly advanced aerospace vehicles under highly 'intelligent' control indeed."
-Dr. Richard F. Haines, retired NASA senior research scientist at Ames Research Center and the Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science where he worked on the International Space Station.--From the preface of his book, CE-5, 1998.
[The UFO] was buried in the side of a cliff. When I first saw it, I was scared. I think the creatures calmed me….[Later] I was arrested [by an Air Force officer]. He was saying, "Do you like the Constitution?" I’m like, "Yeah." He said, "We don’t obey. We just do what we want. And if you tell anybody [about us or the UFO], you will just come up missing."
Marine Corps, Corporal Jonathan Weygandt
A red and green glowing orb radiated as it hurtled across the southwestern Georgia skies that January 1969 evening. Ten minutes later, it vanished. That was Jimmy Carter's story — and he's sticking to it. Carter, then Georgia's governor, became the first major politician to risk achieving "crackpot" status by claiming he had had a close encounter."... "I don't laugh at people any more when they say they've seen UFOs," Carter said at a Southern Governors Conference a few years later. "I've seen one myself."
Former President Jimmy Carter
ABC News interview
More quotes from scientists of note:
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