In March 1966 dozens of people around Dexter and Hillsdale, Michigan, reported glowing lights over swampy ground. The Air Force's answer, which the press boiled down to "swamp gas", was mocked across the country, and Michigan congressman Gerald Ford asked for a hearing.
On April 5 the House Armed Services Committee put the question to the Air Force. Secretary Harold Brown read a letter giving the official numbers: 10,147 reports from 1947 to 1965, of which the Air Force said it had identified 9,501. That left 646 listed as unidentified, about 6 percent.
Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the Northwestern University astronomer who had advised Project Blue Book since 1952, used his statement to ask for something new: a panel of civilian scientists to look at the cases that would not go away. Blue Book's project officer, Maj. Hector Quintanilla, sat beside them.
The hearing led straight to the Air Force contract with the University of Colorado, the study run by physicist Edward Condon that would report in 1969.
We can't just write them off. There are too many responsible people who are concerned.
One is led to ask whether there might not indeed be a signal somewhere in the noise.