This is one of the 24 pages of one of the many formerly secret official documents on this issue. These pages are the minutes of an important conference on the issue held at Los Alamos on February 16, 1949. Representatives of the Army, the FBI, the Air Force and scientists joined together. Dr. La Paz spent two years chasing the green fireballs and explains the issues. Dr. Edward Teller, one of the fathers of the atomic bomb, asks questions.
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Conference on AERIAL PHENOMENA
I think that if anyone of the UCLA Institute of Geophysics had been observing, it would have gotten to Kaplan's ears ... There are two great advantages to this area; first, you have clear skies at night and can observe them as they come down, and second, (record blank for a minute or two).
Dr. Holloway: ... This was before the war. They had a telephone network which covered a fair section of the East there ... a network so that your observations ... I mention this to indicate, I don't know what he is doing now, but at least they may have a group of people who have been observing. May not be in a position to ... green fireballs, but they might have seen them.
Dr. LaPaz: My one attempt to contact ... and unfortunately I did not approach him again for information, but someone acquainted with him should certainly ask if they have observed any of this sort of thing there.
Comdr. Mandelkorn: Well, wouldn't phenomena of this nature have been reported to the Society, no matter where they occurred?
Dr. LaPaz: Yes, I would think so. For example, you can consult the so-called meteor notes of the American Meteor Society, and popular astronomy, they are published from month to month with the President, C.C. Olivia, director of the Florida Observatory at the University of Pennsylvania. I've been through those very carefully, There's one single solitary case of a fireball which by one observer - a doubly observed fireball - so it was possible for me to ... in which one of the observers mentions a green color. Not this particular yellow-green which most people in that work find unusual, and in the case of that the elevation determined is in the order of, oh 199 kilometers from the beginning point and roughly 100 for the end., so I think it is only an ordinary fireball; nothing unusual about it. That was the only case I found.
Comdr. Mandelkorn: According to recent records, were the observations conditions in other parts of the country satisfactory? At least part of the time?
Dr. LaPaz: Well, I infer from the fact that we have had so much trouble out here and the East has been bragging about its climatic advantages; that probably during the recent months, they have had good observancy. I haven't attempted a full scale check on that.
Comdr. Mandelkorn: Let's put it this way then: Have there been a sufficient number of fireballs reported in the last 60 days in other parts of the country to lead us to infer that has some of these occurred, they would have been reported?
Dr. LaPaz: I think that definitely is true. To my knowledge, as far as the contacts I've had with Olivia and so on, there was nothing out of the normal noted in the East, and in the South, shall we say as far up as White Sands. Whether the Harvard Observatory setup observed anything peculiar or not, I don't know. We tried right away to get that information. We were told by the gentleman in charge down there, I'm sure this will be of interest to you, that
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