The Robertson Panel: Why a CIA Panel Wanted to Debunk UFOs

In 1953 a CIA-sponsored panel of scientists reviewed UFO reports and proposed a public campaign to debunk them, possibly with help from Disney.

The Robertson Panel was a CIA-sponsored group of scientists that reviewed UFO reports in January 1953. It found no direct threat, but worried that floods of reports could clog military channels, and advised a public campaign to debunk UFOs.

After a wave of sightings in 1952, the CIA sponsored the Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects. It became known as the Robertson Panel after its chairman, Caltech physicist H. P. Robertson. The CIA describes it as a "distinguished panel of nonmilitary scientists". Its members were Samuel Goudsmit, Luis Alvarez, Thornton Page and Lloyd Berkner, and CIA officer Frederick Durant served as secretary. The panel met in mid-January 1953 and reviewed Air Force case files and films.

The panel decided that most sightings had ordinary explanations. It concluded that "the images on the Tremonton film," shot in Utah in 1952, "were caused by sunlight reflecting off seagulls." Its report found "no indication that these phenomena constitute a direct physical threat to national security." It warned, however, that "continued emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena does, in these parlous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs."

The best-remembered recommendation came next. In the words of a CIA history by Gerald K. Haines, "the panel recommended that the National Security Council debunk UFO reports and institute a policy of public education to reassure the public of the lack of evidence behind UFOs. It suggested using the mass media, advertising, business clubs, schools, and even the Disney corporation to get the message across." It also recommended that private UFO groups in Los Angeles and Wisconsin "be monitored for subversive activities."

The report stayed classified at first. After NICAP pressed for it in 1958, the Air Force released three summary paragraphs and the members' names, and a nearly complete version appeared in Saturday Review in 1966. Decades later, the Pentagon's UAP office noted that the panel had discussed "the complete lack of the recovery of any 'hardware'" from unexplained sightings. The detailed notes of the meetings by the panel's secretary, Frederick Durant, are cited throughout the CIA's own history of the episode.