What Was the Condon Report?

Term: Condon Report: the formal title is Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, a University of Colorado study directed by physicist Edward Condon and released in January 1969.

Term: Low memo: an August 1966 memo by project coordinator Robert Low that critics say showed the study expected to find nothing.

Term: Project Blue Book: the Air Force’s UFO investigation, which closed in December 1969.

What Was the Condon Report?

The Condon Report was a study of UFOs by the University of Colorado, paid for by the Air Force and directed by physicist Edward Condon. It was completed in 1968 and released in January 1969. Condon concluded that further extensive study of UFOs was unlikely to advance science. The Air Force used that conclusion to close Project Blue Book in December 1969. The study remains controversial.

How it began

By the mid-1960s, the Air Force wanted to end its UFO work. In 1966 it funded an independent study at the University of Colorado. Edward Condon, a well-known physicist, directed it. Robert Low, an administrator at the university, ran the project day to day. The team examined hundreds of files and investigated new reports.

The report

The report ran to 1,485 pages in hardcover and 965 pages in the paperback edition. It sorted cases into groups, including older reports, new reports, photographs, radar and visual cases, and astronaut sightings. Condon wrote a short set of conclusions and recommendations at the front. He stated that nothing found in the past 21 years had added to scientific knowledge and that further extensive study was not justified. The National Academy of Sciences reviewed the report and endorsed it.

The Low memo

In August 1966, before the study began, Low wrote a memo to university administrators. He said the trick would be to make the public think the project was objective while scientists could see it was run by nonbelievers who had almost no expectation of finding a saucer. The memo became public in 1968. Low left the project, two staff members were dismissed, and the private research group NICAP withdrew its support. Critics read the memo as proof that the conclusion was decided in advance.

What the cases showed

Critics, including J. Allen Hynek, said the report’s summary did not match its own case studies. By some counts, roughly 30 percent of the cases the team examined were left unexplained. The staff emphasized the hard cases and open questions, while Condon emphasized the difficulty of further study. Defenders say the team examined the evidence honestly and that unexplained does not mean extraterrestrial.

The result

The Air Force used the report to justify ending Project Blue Book. For decades, official U.S. study of UFOs stopped, until the Pentagon began collecting reports again in the 2000s and 2010s.

What is solid and what is not

The report, the Low memo, and the closure of Blue Book are documented. Whether the study was honest science or a planned exit is disputed. In my book Disclosure: They Are Not Extraterrestrials, I describe the report as a study whose conclusion was decided in advance. I hold that view, and readers should know that the people involved disputed it. Disclosure is available on Amazon. You can find more of my work at ckqbooks.com.

Sources

Wikipedia, Condon Committee. Condon Committee, Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (1968). National Academy of Sciences, Review of the University of Colorado Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1969). Think Anomalous, Condon UFO Report. HISTORY, How the CIA Tried to Quell UFO Panic During the Cold War (2025).