Dr. Louis Alvarez, a physics professor from the University or California in Berkley, developer of MEW radar at the beginning of World War II and one of the "fathers" of the H-bomb. He sat on the panel that met in Washington in January 1953. Alavarz was only lukewarm to the idea that the UFO's might be real.

General Cabell was the Director of Intelligence for the Air Force during the 1947-1951 UFO era. He is the one who ordered Project Grudge reorganized in the summer of 1951. I didn't know him too well because he left to become number two man in the CIA shortly after I got on the project. He is the man who held the initial meeting in the Pentagon that Lt. Jerry Cummings and Col Rosengarten attended. He raised all kinds of hell when he found out that Col Watson and ATIC hadn't been doing anything about the UFO project in 1950. According to what Cummings said, he was pretty much a believer in the UFO's. General Samord replaced Cabell in the summer of1951.

Al Deyarnond was an old hand with the UFO's, he'd been in on the first of Project Sign. From the old memo's I found, signed by him, he was once a firm believer along with Al Loeding, "Red" Honnacker and the rest of the veterans or Project Sign. But by the time I got into the picture was, at least on the surface, lined up with the scoffers. But once, when I began to knock the UFO's, he raised the devil and chewed me out for not keeping an open mind." I would guess that he was a "scoffer" because he was a deciple of Col. Watson's. Deyarmond is now chief of structures at Ryan Aircrart Company.

Dewey was Blue Book's liason man in the D.I. He took over in early 1952 or late 1951 from a Lt. Col. whose name I've forgotten. The Lt. Col. was a completely worthless jerk. Dewey got hot on the subject right away and helped us a great deal in getting things straightened out in the Pentagon. His job was just supposed to be part time, but within a matter of months he was working on it full time. Fournet was the most confirmed believer that I ran into in the Pentagon. He had access to all of our reports, read them all over very carefully, and he was still absolutely convinced. He and I used to argue by the hour and I must say that he had some good arguments. All of his conclusions were based on the "race value" of the reports. If a person said that they saw something and had a good description of it, Dewey took this as the last word. He and I disagreed when I didn't buy the reports lock, stock and barrel. I didn't think that the person was using or having hallucinations, I was sure that they reported what they saw, but I wasn't convinced that what they saw was actually what happened. In other words I played it heavy on the "optical illusion" side and I backed this up with experience. I'd investigated too many reports and found that something that starts out to seem real rnysterious can many times prove to be something very simple. No matter how much I talked, however, I never convinced Fournet that I had a point. Dewey is now (1955) a civilian engineer with the Ethyl Corporation in Baton Rouge, La.

General Garland was my boss at ATIC from the Fall of 1952 until I left. He was a moderately confirmed believer. He had seen a UFO while he was stationed in Sacramento, California. He was Gen. Samford’s assistant in the Pentagon before he came to ATIC and he was the inspiration behind the Life article by Ginna. He gave Ginna his ideas and prompted Life to stick their necks out. Gen. Garland is now out of the Air Force and is a consultant to Rand.

This man, from AEC’s Brookhaven Lab on Long Island, sat on the Panel that met in Washington in January 1953. Goudsmidt was probably the most violent anti-saucer man at the panel meeting. Everything was a big joke to him which brought down the wrath of the other panel members on numerous occasions.

Chuck Hardin is running Project Blue Book at the present time. Since the operation of the project has changed and the 4602nd has taken over the leg work, he doesn’t have much to do. By his own admission, he has a good deal at ATIC and is playing it for all it is worth. General Watson doesn’t like UFO’s so Hardin is keeping things just as quiet as possible and staying out from under everyone’s feet. In other words, being a regular Air Force, he is just doing as little as possible because he knows how controversial the subject is and his philosophy is that if you don’t do anything you won’t get hurt. He definitely doesn’t believe in UFO’s, in fact he thinks that anyone who is even interested is crazy. They bore him. He has been the one big bottleneck in my getting anything from the Air Force because he is afraid that my book will stir things up too much.

Father Hayden was head of the astronomy department at Georgetown University. I never met him but Dr. Steve Possony was always going to him with our UFO problems. Father Hayden seemed to be very much interested in our problems and couldn’t at all be classed as a scoffer.

Dr. Hynek has been the consultant astronomer to Projects Sign, Grudge and Blue Book. I won’t say that he’s a “believer” but he’s darn interested. He has devoted a great deal of his valuable time to the project. He has read almost every UFO report in the Air Force files. Inthe summer of 1952 he debated with Menzel at the American Optical Society meeting in Boston and blasted Menzel right out of the hall. He sat on the panel in Washington in January 1952 and was very much pro-UFO. Dr. Hynek is Head of the Ohio State Univ. Astronomy Department, Director of the Perkins Observatory and Assistant Dean of the USU Graduate School. He is still working for Blue Book.

“Jimmy” Lipp was the Rand Corporations guided missile expert and he was violently anti-saucer. He wrote an analysis of the possibility that other planets were inhabited for the Grudge report. Early in 1953 Col. Don Bower and I tried to enlist Rand’s aid, on a contract basis, to try to develop some way of getting more positive answers but, at the recommendation of Lipp, Rand refused to touch it. “Too hot,” was their reason. I think controversial would have been a better word than “hot.”

Thornton Paige of John Hopkin’s Operations Research Office, editor of the Operations Research Journal, and an astronomer, sat on the panel in Washington D.C. in January 1952. He tended to line up with Hynek against Louis Alvarez and Goudsmidt to stick up for the UFO’s. He actually didn’t know too much about the subject but, like Hynek, he didn’t go along with the idea of being so definite about the UFO’s not existing.

Steve Possony was the acting chief of the Directorate of Intelligence Special Study Group and he had a direct channel to Samford. Steve was pretty much sold on the whole thing. He did a lot of investigating on his own book and he had Father Hayden, the astonomer, as his special consultant. Steve and his crew used to cruise all over the U.S. and Europe and during these travels they picked up a lot of UFO data. Steve was behind Fournet 100% and tended to push him. He was smart enough to know that the UFO situation was hot so he used Fournet, who was a reserve and didn’t plan to stay in the Air Force any longer than he had to, to try out his ideas. Possony didn’t much care what he said, however, and he used to go to battle with any or all of the more vocal skeptics. He really got teed off at Menzell and went to all ends to find out everything about the man. It turned out to be very interesting. Possony had a good reputation in the Air Force. Besides being a fairly sharp intelligence man, he is a professor at Georgetown University and he has written quite a bit on the strategy and concepts of airpower. He is considered one the of the world’s experts on this subject.

Bob Robertson is now chief scientific advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of NATO. He first came out to ATIC in November 1952, with a group of other scientists, to review our UFO material. He and his party stayed two days and then went back to Washington and suggested to the National Security Council that a group of top scientists get together to look over the reports. At that time, at least, he...(missing page here?) no more info on this man in original typed letter

General Samford never committed himself one way or the other on the subject of UFO’s. He was always very much interested and gave me the utmost in cooperation, but he never said much. He used to ask many of the other people at meetings what they thought and there were a lot of “pro” answers but he never agreed or disagreed with anyone. The only time that I ever heard him say anything was when Col Porter got real nasty about the whole thing one day and began to knock ATIC, UFO’s, me and everything associated with the project. Then the General said something to the effect that as far as he could see, I was the first person in the history of the Air Force’s investigation that had taken a serious approach to the investigation and that he didn’t see how anyone could decide until I’d collected more data. At the present time the General is the one who is so rabid on the fact that nothing will be released. He got “burned” real bad on the press conference in July 1952. His statements were twisted around and newsreel shots of him were “cut and pieced” to get him saying things that he didn’t. He wanted to play along with the writers but they misquoted him so badly that now he is saying absolutely nothing. Donald Keyhoe keeps writing about the “silence group” in the Air Force, those who want to clamp down on UFO news. Gen Sanford is the silence group and friend Keyhoe can take all of the credit for making him that way.

(1890-1969). Lieutenant General. USAF, 1917-1952. Born 24 November 1890, Cincinnati, OH.BS, United States Military Academy, 1915. Signal Aviation School, 1917; Air Corps Tactical School, 1930; Command and General Staff School, 1932; Army War College, 1939. Commissioned Additional Second Lieutenant, Infantry, June 1915 and served to grade of First Lieutenant, 1915-1917; began duty in Aviation Section, Signal Corps, May 1917. Career assignments include: various duties as company and field grade officer, 1917-1939; Chief, Training and Operations Division, Office of Chief of Air Corps, 1939-1941; Chief of Air Staff, HQ USAAF, 1942-1943; successively Commanding General, Eastern Air Command and India-Burma Sector (China-Burma-India Theater), 1943-1945; Commanding General, USAAF-China, 1945-1946; Commanding General, Air Defense Command, 1946-1948; Commander, Far East Air Forces, 1949-1951. Retired January 1952. Died August 1969, Orlando, FL.

Personal papers relating to Stratemeyer's military career. Includes personal correspondence and diaries (197-1946). Also includes some copies of his personnel and military flying records (1920-1943), some photograph albums (1948-1949) from his WWII and post-war assignments in the Far East and a few items of memorabilia.

Charley Zimmerman was the technical advisor to the chief of the Analysis Branch at ATIC. I never could figure out exactly where he stood on the subject of UFO’s but I think he was a bit of a believer. Several times I tried to put through an explanation that a UFO was a balloon or other known object and he’d argue like mad against it. Many times he’d come running into my office to show me “a new, red hot report”.