1955: Edward Ruppelt and UFOs

As the world waited to hear what ex Blue Book chief Edward Ruppelt would say in his book, the US Government made a pre-emp­tive strike. They had sat on some remarkable evidence since 1952 - a study by the presti­gious Battelle Memorial Institute that would have increased public belief if allowed to be released accurately.

Battelle had access to all 4,000 Blue Book files. It selected the best 2,199 and carried out a detailed statistical analysis from every conceivable angle. Amongst their findings was the discovery that the unexplained cases differed markedly from those that were resolved; This virtually disproved the skeptics' claim that all UFOs would be identified if more data was available. The odds against this option were shown to be one billion to one. Battelle further concluded that 22% of the cases were unsolved.

On October 25th the USAF released a very misleading summary of the Battelle findings. It made no mention of these remarkable results and indicated that only a small number of cases were left unexplained. The 22% were termed a 'few remaining unknowns'.

A few weeks later, Ruppelt's book was published as 'The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects'. It built a case for something truly extraordinary through many case histories that the air force officer had personally investigated.

Of course, its impact was weakened by the release of the USAF's version of the Battelle study. It would be a long time before the world got to see how they were being continually deceived, and so ask the pertinent question 'if UFOs are unimportant nonsense why do the powers that be need to lie, cover up und distort the truth about them?'