Project Bluebook

A project report.

Blue Book was the Air Force's twenty-one year investigation into the UFO phenomenon. Starting in 1948 the group investigated 12,600 UFO reports and over time assumed the role of an official debunker for the US government in the matter of UFOs. While Blue Book was unable to explain 701 of those reports it had investigated, it also never established there were really alien spacecraft operating in the skies. Reaching the conclusion that these sighting didn't threaten the national security, Project Blue Book, which had been reorganized as the Condon Committee under the direction of Dr. Edward U. Condon (a physicist and one-time head of the American Association of the Advancement of Science), closed down in 1969.

In the final report Condon said the twenty-one year effort had added nothing to scientific knowledge and further study was probably unnecessary. He also said, "it is safe to assume that no ILE [intelligent life elsewhere] outside our solar system has any possibility of visiting Earth in the next 10,000 years." This estimate, given the lack of information about life and technology outside our solar system, has been widely disputed.

After Project Blue Book was terminated all of it's files were declassified and made available to the public. Interestingly enough, other UFO related documents not held by Project Blue Book have remained classified. Private UFO groups have sued to have those files opened to the public.

A civilian consultant hired by Blue Book, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, continued the investigation by forming, with other researchers, his own agency, the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) in 1973. Of the thousands of UFO reports investigated by CUFOS roughly 80 percent of them can be explained while 20 percent remain a mystery.