The article below was published in the daily newspaper The Daily Telegram, Eau-Claire, Wisconsin, USA, page 9, on July 30, 1968.
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WASHINGTON (UPI) – Scientists told Congress Monday there were too many sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects to rule out the possibility that earth might be under surveillance by creatures from outer space. They urged lawmakers to support a thorough investigation.
Dr. Carl Sagan, astronomy professor at Cornell University, said if there are other technical civilizations among the hundreds of billions of stars in the universe, any random one of them is likely to be vastly ahead of us.
"This is a possibility I take very seriously," said Dr. James E. McDonald, senior physicist with the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Arizona. "If there is even a chance of surveillance, we should explore it."
Dr. J. Allen Hynek, director of Northwestern University's Dearborn Observatory, said: "My scientific hunch... is that there is much more dirt in the UFO phenomenon."
He urged Congress to establish and support a "UFO board of scientific inquiry" to sponsor a variety of investigations along with an "international clearing house" to correlate reports of UFO sightings from around the world.
The scientists testified at a symposium on UFOs sponsored by the House Committee on Science and Astronautics.
Noting UFO sightings by responsible and skeptical witnesses around the world, McDonald said: "Far too many cases defy easy analysis."
He said these included some cases where witnesses on the ground flashed lights into a pattern of hovering, disc-like craft which responded with flashing lights in the same pattern.
"It would be terrible if this technology was represented by the Eveready flashlight."
McDonald also said there were many UFO sightings reported up and down the Eastern Seaboard around the time of the Northeast power blackout in late 1965.
Since the cause of the power pulse which precipitated the blackout has never been identified, McDonald said "There is a puzzling and slightly disturbing coincidence here."
If the earth is being watched, Sagan said "It would not be folly to ignore it... It is not beyond question that we could be visited."
McDonald said if the earth was being watched from space, it was being done by a society so advanced that to earthmen its technology "would be indistinguishable from magic."
