The Robertson Panel
In January 1953 a panel of scientists met to review the US Air Force's UFO files for the CIA, and recommended a public education campaign to debunk sightings.
The Robertson Panel first met formally on 14 January 1953. Howard P. Robertson, a physicist and CIA consultant, led it after the CIA ordered him to assemble a group of leading scientists to examine Air Force UFO files. Before the meeting he went through the Air Force files and procedures himself.
The CIA historian Gerald Haines gives 17 January as the last day. Other accounts count four days of meetings. By Haines's account the panel spent 12 hours studying the data and said it could suggest reasonable explanations for most of the sightings, possibly all.
The panel's classified report also proposed education programmes to debunk sightings and show the public how to recognise ordinary phenomena. It suggested articles, television shows and films, and named the Walt Disney Corporation as a possible helper. The report said such a programme should reduce the public's gullibility and its susceptibility to hostile propaganda.
"The Robertson Panel first met formally on January 14, 1953, under the direction of Howard P. Robertson. He was a physicist, a CIA consultant, and the director of the Defense Department Weapons Evaluation Group. He was instructed by OSI to assemble a group of prominent scientists to review the Air Force's UFO files. In preparation for this, Robertson first personally reviewed Air Force files and procedures. The Air Force had recently commissioned the Battelle Memorial Institute to scientifically study all of the UFO reports collected by Project Sign, Project Grudge and Project Blue Book."
- CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 (Gerald K. Haines, Studies in Intelligence), Central Intelligence Agency / Federation of American Scientists
- The CIA Robertson Panel (History of the United States Air Force UFO Programs), Sign Oral History Project
- How the CIA Tried to Quell UFO Panic During the Cold War, History.com