Condon Report

The Air Force funded the study in 1966 as it sought to end its own UFO work. Edward Condon directed it, and university administrator Robert Low coordinated it day to day. The team reviewed hundreds of files and investigated new reports.

The report ran to 1,485 pages in hardcover and 965 in paperback, grouping cases into older reports, new reports, photographs, radar-visual cases, and astronaut sightings. Condon’s summary stated that nothing in the previous 21 years had added to scientific knowledge and that further extensive study was not justified. The National Academy of Sciences reviewed and endorsed it.

An August 1966 memo by Low, written before the study began, described making the public see the project as objective while scientists would see it was run by nonbelievers who expected to find nothing. When it became public in 1968, Low left the project, two staff members were dismissed, and NICAP withdrew its support.

Critics including J. Allen Hynek said the summary did not match the report’s case studies, of which roughly 30 percent by some counts remained unexplained. Defenders say the evidence was examined honestly and that unexplained does not mean extraterrestrial.

The Air Force cited the report in closing Project Blue Book in December 1969. Official U.S. study of UFOs then largely ceased until the Pentagon resumed collecting reports in the 2000s and 2010s.