Condon Report

The Condon Report — formally Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (Bantam, 1969) — is the published final report of the University of Colorado UFO Project, a federally contracted study conducted between October 1966 and October 1968 under the scientific direction of physicist Dr. Edward U. Condon. The report is the most institutionally consequential single document in the U.S. government’s UFO record: its conclusions ended Project Blue Book and set the official posture that prevailed from 1969 until the 2017 disclosures.

Origins

The Air Force commissioned the study in 1966 in response to mounting congressional and public pressure following the 1965–66 wave of UFO sightings and the embarrassment of the Michigan “swamp gas” press conference. The contract — approximately $523,000, administered through the Air Force Office of Scientific Research — was awarded to the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Edward Condon, then 64, was a senior figure in twentieth-century American physics: former director of the National Bureau of Standards, former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a quantum theorist of substantial reputation. His selection was understood by both the Air Force and outside observers as a deliberate choice of a credentialed skeptic.

The “trick memo” and internal dissent

The study was internally fractious almost from the outset. The most-cited episode is the Low memo — an August 1966 memorandum from project coordinator Robert Low to two University of Colorado administrators, written before the contract was finalized, in which Low described how the project could be presented “to the scientific community” so as “to give the appearance of a totally objective study but, to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective.”

The memo was discovered in 1967 by project staff and surfaced publicly in 1968. Two researchers — Dr. David Saunders and Dr. Norman Levine — were dismissed by Condon after raising it; physicist James E. McDonald of the University of Arizona used the memo to argue that the project was institutionally pre-committed to a negative conclusion. The episode is widely referred to in subsequent literature as the “trick memo” affair and remains the principal basis for arguing that the Condon Report’s overall conclusion preceded its evidentiary analysis.

The Hartmann McMinnville chapter

The substantive case analyses in the report are, in places, more equivocal than the headline conclusion. The most-cited example is Case 46: McMinnville, Oregon — the analysis of the 1950 McMinnville (Trent) photographs, conducted by astronomer William K. Hartmann, then a junior member of the Condon team.

Hartmann’s published conclusion, examined in full in the McMinnville case file, was that all factors investigated appeared “consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disk-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within sight of two witnesses.” Several other case analyses in the report — including the Lakenheath–Bentwaters case (Case #00072) — concluded that the reports could not be assigned a mundane explanation on the available evidence.

The structural disjunction between the report’s headline conclusion and the texture of its case analyses is the basis for the common observation that Condon read his own report less carefully than his successors did.

Conclusion and consequences

Condon’s own summary chapter, written by Condon personally, concluded that “nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge” and recommended that “further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.” The American Association for the Advancement of Science arranged a symposium in December 1969 at which McDonald, J. Allen Hynek, and others contested both the methodology and the conclusion; the symposium proceedings, published in 1972, are themselves a substantial document in the historical record.

The Air Force used the report’s conclusion as the official rationale for closing Project Blue Book in December 1969. No successor public-facing investigation program was established. The 1969–2007 institutional gap in formal U.S. government UFO investigation is, in direct lineage, a consequence of the Condon Report.

Status in 2026

The Condon Report remains in print and is freely available online (the text is hosted by the National Capital Area Skeptics and several mirrors). It is regularly cited in Council case files for any U.S. case prior to 1969, and is treated by the Council as a serious — though contested — primary-source document. The 2024 AARO historical review acknowledged the Condon Report’s role in the post-1969 institutional posture but did not formally re-litigate its conclusions.

The Council’s general position is that the Condon Report’s case-by-case analyses retain substantial documentary value, while its overall conclusion should be read against the documentary record of how it was produced — including the Low memo and the dismissals of Saunders and Levine.