Out There: The Government's Secret Quest for Extraterretrials By Howard Blum Simon and Schuster ISBN 0-671-66260-0 QB54.B64 booknotes by Charles McGrew Told in a semi-journalistic style, with a brisk narrative. Its a style used often in investigative contexts, and reads well. Much of it centers around the "UFO Working Group" within the DIA, headed by Col. Harold E. Phillips. What follows are some notes from the book -- there's more to the book, but here's what I wanted to hang onto. Timeline: 1947 July 2 Bill Brazel finds crashed-disk wreckage near Roswell July 4 Marcel sees wreckage July ? Air Force release of 'disk-found' message July ? Air Force contradictory release of 'balloon-found' message July 12 Letter from Ken Arnold to Wright Field commander; official file begins. Oct 1 FBI Bulletin #59; all UFO information to USAF Dec 30 Project Sign begins 1948 OSS sets of committee to study UFO phenominon ATIC estimate saying UFO's are extraterrestrials burned by Gen. Vandenburg; AFIN 100-203-79 issued instead 1949 CIA's OSI memo shows concern over UFO's Feb Project Sign ends; Project Grudge begins 1952 March Project Grudge ends; Project Bluebook begins OSI's memo shows CIA's "disinterest" is a cover for actual interest. 1954 Aug 12 AF200-2 (Twining) to withhold UFO info from public disclosure 1958 Jan Keyhoe's talk on CBS (audio portion) cut off air of a discussion show. 1959 Dec 24 USAF letter to base commanders - UFO's are AF (not public) business. 1961 CIA monograph "The investigation of UFO's" Nov Projects "Moon Dust" and "Blue Fly" created (but not used, at least officially.) "Moon Dust" was to "locate, recover, and deliver descended foreign space vehicles"; "Blue Fly" to "facilitate to FTD (Foreign Technology Division, Wright-Patterson AFB) of Moon Dust or other items of great technical intelligence interest.". The memo (by a Colonel Betz), goes on to note that "foreign" vehicles includes "unidentified flying objects", and that the units should be able to go *anywhere*, recover or perform "field exploitation". (Later - date unspecified, just "in the 1960's and 1970's - "Saint" - a UFO inspector, would be launched piggybacked on an Agena-B reconaissance satellite (used by the CIA) to view UFO's in space; and "Blue Gemini", a manned Gemini capsule which would attempt to actually capture "uncooperative" UFO's or satellites. Both these projects were - officially, at least - never implimented.) 1962 Oct 29 DoD asst. sec. Sylvester says UFO info can legally be withheld from public and even the Congress, by AF Reg. 11-7 that states that some information the AF holds may legally be withheld. 1968 NSA paper "UFO hypothesis and survival questions" by Callimahos 1969 Dec 17 Bluebook terminated. 1972 NSA orders flash-reporting of UFO signals or foreign signals about UFO's to NSA headquarters Apr "Wow" signal seen by Ohio State's "Big Ear" 1975 Fall -> Spring 1976 many UFO sightings at Northern US USAF bases 1976 Apr CIA memo describing "monitoring the phenomenon" CIA memo (Dommestic Collection Division) getting information from Science and Tech. sources 1980 Sep Bill Moore meets "Falcon" Gov't agencies feed disinformation to Bennewitz to pull his Project Beta off track at Kirtland. 1981 Bill Moore meets Bennewitz Executive Order 12333 - CIA allowed (with servere restrictions) to operate in the USA 1983 Moore passes false "Aquarius Document" to Bennewitz. Gen. Pfaltz (USAF) of AFIN begins "record search" 1984 Dec 11 MJ 12 film shows up at Shandera's door. A roll of of 35mm film arrives, containing pictures of the now-famous "Eisenhower briefing document" 1985 Fall SRI "psychic viewers" demo [Project Aquarius] 1986 Dec USSSC spots UFO on radar DIA's Phillips uses Project Aquarius viewers to 'observe' USSSC UFO's 1987 Feb DIA's UFOWG meets for first time Mar Gen. Pfaltz (ret) presentation of UFOWG May UFOWG (via NSA) infiltrates NASA's SETI project with a view to controlling release of information Jun Klass writes FBI about MJ-12 documents, stimulates FBI (and eventually UFOWG) interest Nov NSA report: "SETI: An Evaluation"; SETI folks said to be getting regular signals 1988 July UFOWG (via CIA) sends two DCD agents to Elmwood, Wis. Fall FBI queries DIA about MJ-12 docs 1989 Fall UFOWG still wondering about MJ-12 docs. Not a bad read, though there isn't any "final summation", the book just sort of peters out at the end (except a kind of lame "if people believe, and are nice folks, then there's hope".)