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| Type | Non-Profit Organization |
|---|---|
| Founded | October 24, 1956 |
| Defunct | 1980 |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Website | www |
The National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) was an unidentified flying object (UFO) research group most active in the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s. It remains active primarily as an informational depository on the UFO phenomenon.
NICAP was a non-profit organization and faced financial collapse many times in its existence, due in no small part to business ineptitude among the group's directors. Following a wave of nationally publicized UFO incidents in the mid-1960s, NICAP's membership spiked dramatically, and only then did the organization become financially stable. However, following publication of the Condon Report in 1968, NICAP's membership declined sharply, and the organization again fell into long-term financial decline and disarray.
Despite these internal troubles, NICAP probably had the most visibility of any civilian American UFO group, and arguably had the most mainstream respectability; Jerome Clark writes that "for many middle-class Americans and others interested in UFOs but repelled by ufology’s fringe aspects, it served as a sober forum for UFO reporting, inquiry, investigation, and speculation". [1] NICAP advocated transparent scientific investigation of UFO sightings and was skeptical of "contactee" tales involving meetings with space visitors, the alien abduction phenomenon, and the like. The presence of several prominent military officials as members of NICAP brought a further measure of respectability for many observers.
Throughout its existence, NICAP argued that there was an organized governmental cover-up of UFO evidence. NICAP also pushed for governmental hearings regarding UFOs, with occasional success. [2]
Though any UFO-related group attracts a number of uncritical enthusiasts along with a small percentage of cranks, astronomer J. Allen Hynek cited NICAP and Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) as the two best civilian UFO groups of their time, consisting largely of sober, serious-minded people capable of valuable contributions to the subject. [3]
Until the mid-1960s, NICAP gave little attention to close encounters of the third kind (where animated beings are purportedly sighted in relation to a UFO). However, longtime NICAP member Richard H. Hall related privately that this position was "tactical and not doctrinaire." [4] In other words, NICAP did not necessarily dismiss occupant reports out of hand, but elected to focus on other aspects of the UFO phenomenon which would be perceived by mainstream observers as less outlandish and more believable. The attention given to the contactees of the 1950s such as George Adamski and Truman Bethurum (who typically claimed ongoing contact with benevolent "Space Brothers") was almost certainly a factor in NICAP's reluctance to study UFO occupant reports too closely. But with the 1964 New Mexico Lonnie Zamora UFO encounter — regarded by researchers as one of the most reliable UFO occupant reports — NICAP loosened its restrictions on studying UFO occupant reports.
NICAP was founded on October 24, 1956, by inventor Thomas Townsend Brown. The board of governors included several prominent men, including Donald Keyhoe, Maj USMC (Ret.), and former chief of the Navy's guided missile program RADM Delmer S. Fahrney USN (Ret.)
By early January 1957, however, Brown had proved so financially inept that the board asked him to step down. Fahrney replaced him, then convened a press conference on January 16, 1957, where he announced that UFOs were under intelligent control, but that they were of neither American or Soviet origin. The press conference received major attention, doubtless aided by Fahrney's stature.
In April 1957, Fahrney resigned from NICAP, citing personal issues. It was later disclosed that his wife was seriously ill. [5] Fahrney was bothered by the whispers and ridicule his UFO interests generated among many of his peers in the military.[ citation needed ]
Keyhoe became NICAP's director. He established a monthly newsletter, The U.F.O. Investigator. Another prominent figure joined NICAP's board of governors: Keyhoe's Naval Academy classmate VADM Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, USN (Ret.) He had been Director of Central Intelligence and first head of the Central Intelligence Agency. Another important name on the letterhead was that of Gen. Albert Coady Wedemeyer USA (Ret.) [6]
The organization had chapters and local associates scattered throughout the United States. Many of their members were amateurs, but a considerable percentage were professionals, including journalists, military personnel, scientists and physicians. One of NICAP's prime goals was thorough field investigations of UFO reports. They would eventually compile a significant number of case files and field investigations which Clark characterises as "often first rate". [7]
By 1958, NICAP had grown to over 5000 members. Keyhoe's financial management and business skills were only slightly better than Brown's, and NICAP hobbled along throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, facing collapse on several occasions. For most of his tenure as director, Keyhoe sent irregular letters to NICAP's members, warning of the organization's imminent collapse, and soliciting funds to keep NICAP going. According to Jerome Clark (see sources below), Keyhoe often paid for much of NICAP's operating expenses himself.
The 1960s found much of the American public keenly interested in UFOs, and NICAP's membership crested at 14,000. This influx of members greatly improved the group's finances.
Hillenkoetter left the board in 1962. [8]
In 1964, NICAP published The UFO Evidence, edited by Richard H. Hall, a summary of hundreds of unexplained reports studied by NICAP investigators through 1963. Sightings were systematically broken down by witness category and special types of evidence. For example, individual chapters were devoted to sightings by military personnel, pilots and aviation experts, and scientists and engineers. Another chapter was devoted to evidence of intelligent control and yet another to physical evidence or interactions, such as electromagnetic effects, radar tracking, photographs, sound, physiological effects, and so on. Another section examined observed patterns, such as descriptions of shape, color, maneuvers, flight behavior, and concentrations of sightings. The book is still considered an invaluable reference source in the field.
When the United States Air Force, in collaboration with the University of Colorado, established the Condon Committee (1966–68) to study UFOs, NICAP initially aided its investigations, but Keyhoe quickly became disenchanted, limiting NICAP's role. NICAP formally severed ties with the Condon Committee in early 1968. Following the Condon Committee's report (which concluded there was nothing extraordinary about UFOs), public interest in the subject abated, and NICAP's membership dropped to about 5000.
1969 saw the last NICAP efforts of any significance, two monographs: Strange Effects from UFOs and UFOs: A New Look.
NICAP's membership plummeted in the late 1960s, and Keyhoe faced charges of financial incompetence and authoritarianism. By 1969, Keyhoe turned his focus away from the military and focused on the CIA as the source of the UFO cover up. By December 1969, NICAP's board, headed by Colonel Joseph Bryan III, forced Keyhoe to retire as NICAP chief. Under Bryan's leadership, NICAP disbanded its local and state affiliate groups . [9] Afterwards, John L. Acuff became NICAP's director.
NICAP's membership continued to drop as it was led by Acuff and then Alan Hall. By now, the organization was all but paralyzed by infighting, including unsubstantiated charges that the Central Intelligence Agency had infiltrated NICAP. In fact, several persons with CIA ties had joined NICAP; however, their motives and reasons for joining NICAP have been the subject of some debate.
One person specifically named as a suspected CIA infiltrator was retired Air Force Colonel Joseph Bryan III. His son, writer C. D. B. Bryan, dismisses this idea, suggesting that "Anyone who knows anything about the history of NICAP knows that the group didn’t need anybody's help in its disintegration; it simply self-destructed." As to his father's involvement as an alleged CIA agitator, Bryan writes, "my father’s unswerving, outspoken faith in UFOs ... was, I felt, something of an embarrassment ... I do not believe it was the sort of public position an agent would take whose covert goal was to smother interest in UFOs." [10]
1980 saw the last publication of NICAP's newsletter; the organization dissolved later that year. NICAP's archive of UFO sighting case files was subsequently purchased by the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS).
Illness in my family and previous commitments on which I depend for my livelihood force me to take this step.
Evaluation of Information: Albert C. Wedemeyer, USA, (Ret.), Poolesville, Maryland(date uncertain)
He resigned from NICAP in Feb 1962 and was replaced on the NICAP Board by a former covert CIA high official, Joseph Bryan III, the CIA's first Chief of Political & Psychological Warfare (Bryan never disclosed his CIA background to NICAP or Keyhoe).
An unidentified flying object (UFO) is any perceived aerial phenomenon that cannot be immediately identified or explained. On investigation, most UFOs are identified as known objects or atmospheric phenomena, while a small number remain unexplained.
Donald Edward Keyhoe was an American Marine Corps naval aviator, writer of many aviation articles and stories in a variety of leading publications, and manager of the promotional tours of aviation pioneers, especially of Charles Lindbergh.
UFO conspiracy theories are a subset of conspiracy theories which argue that various governments and politicians globally, in particular the Government of the United States, are suppressing evidence that unidentified flying objects are controlled by a non-human intelligence or built using alien technology. Such conspiracy theories usually argue that Earth governments are in communication or cooperation with extraterrestrial visitors despite public claims to the contrary, and further that some of these theories claim that the governments are explicitly allowing alien abduction.
Roscoe Henry Hillenkoetter was the third director of the post–World War II United States Central Intelligence Group (CIG), the third Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), and the first director of the Central Intelligence Agency created by the National Security Act of 1947. He served as DCI and director of the CIG and the CIA from May 1, 1947, to October 7, 1950, and, after his retirement from the United States Navy, was a member of the board of governors of National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) from 1957 to 1962.
In ufology, a close encounter is an event in which a person witnesses an unidentified flying object. This terminology and the system of classification behind it were first suggested in astronomer and UFO researcher J. Allen Hynek's 1972 book The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry. Categories beyond Hynek's original three have been added by others but have not gained universal acceptance, mainly because they lack the scientific rigor that Hynek aimed to bring to ufology.
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Project Blue Book was the code name for the systematic study of unidentified flying objects by the United States Air Force from March 1952 to its termination on December 17, 1969. The project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, was initially directed by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt and followed projects of a similar nature such as Project Sign established in 1947, and Project Grudge in 1948. Project Blue Book had two goals, namely, to determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and to scientifically analyze UFO-related data.
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Josef Allen Hynek was an American astronomer, professor, and ufologist. He is perhaps best remembered for his UFO research. Hynek acted as scientific advisor to UFO studies undertaken by the U.S. Air Force under three projects: Project Sign (1947–1949), Project Grudge (1949-51) and Project Blue Book (1952–1969).
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Edward James Ruppelt was a United States Air Force officer probably best known for his involvement in Project Blue Book, a formal governmental study of unidentified flying objects. He is generally credited with coining the term "unidentified flying object", to replace the terms "flying saucer" and "flying disk" - which had become widely known - because the military thought them to be "misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO for short."
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Michael D. Swords is a retired professor of Natural Science at Western Michigan University, who writes about general sciences and anomalous phenomena, particularly parapsychology, cryptozoology, and ufology, editing the academic publication The Journal of UFO Studies. He is a board member of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies.
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Richard H. Hall was a Ufologist and proponent of the extraterrestrial hypothesis to explain UFO sightings. A member of the Authors Guild, he also wrote numerous books and magazine articles dealing with the role of women in the American Civil War.
Leonard Stringfield (1920–1994) was an American ufologist who took particular interest in crashed flying saucer stories. He died in 1994.
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