Robertson Panel

The Robertson Panel was a scientific committee which met in January 1953 headed by Howard P. Robertson. The Panel arose from a recommendation to the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) in December 1952 from a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) review of the U.S. Air Force investigation into unidentified flying objects, project Blue Book. The CIA review itself was in response to widespread reports of unidentified flying objects, especially in the Washington, D.C. area during the summer of 1952.

The panel was briefed on U.S. military activities and intelligence; hence the report was originally classified Secret. Later declassified, the Robertson Panel's report concluded that UFOs were not a direct threat to national security, but could pose an indirect threat by overwhelming standard military communications due to public interest in the subject. Most UFO reports, they concluded, could be explained as misidentification of mundane aerial objects, and the remaining minority could, in all likelihood, be similarly explained with further study.

The Robertson Panel recommended that a public education campaign should be undertaken in order to reduce public interest in the subject, minimising the risk of swamping Air Defence systems with reports at critical times, and that civilian UFO groups should be monitored. The Robertson Panel’s report was contained within a larger internal CIA report by F C Durant, a CIA officer who served as Secretary to the Panel, which summarises the activities of the panel and its conclusions. This wider document is commonly referred to as the Durant Report.

In 1952 there was a significant increase in the number of UFO reports received by the USAF Blue Book project, tasked with investigating such reports at the time. This wave included widely reported incidents over Washington DC in July, over the weekends of July 19-20 and 26-27. CIA historian Gerald Haines noted “A massive build-up of sightings over the United States in 1952, especially in July, alarmed the Truman administration. On 19 and 20 July, radar scopes at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base tracked mysterious blips. On 27 July, the blips reappeared. The Air Force scrambled interceptor aircraft to investigate, but they found nothing. The incidents, however, caused headlines across the country. The White House wanted to know what was happening…”. The reference to White House interest is consistent with a telephone call Captain (later Major) Edward Ruppelt, Blue Book Project Director at the time, received from Brigadier General Landry, Truman’s military aide, on the July 28, inquiring as to the causes of the Washington reports of the previous days.

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