# The 1968 Condon Report was a rigged whitewash, engineered from the start to bury UFOs regardless of the evidence

**No verdict.** Two things are documented and not in question. The study is real: from 1966 to 1968 the University of Colorado, under Air Force contract and led by physicist Edward U. Condon, produced the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, which concluded that further study of UFOs could probably not be justified on scientific grounds. And the Low memo is real: in August 1966 the project's coordinator, Robert Low, wrote that “the trick” would be to make the study appear objective to the public while presenting the scientific community a group of non-believers with “almost zero expectation of finding a saucer.” The rated claim is the interpretive one built on those facts: that the study was a predetermined whitewash, rigged before it began to dismiss UFOs no matter what the data showed. That claim is disputed. The memo, the summary firing of two investigators, and Condon's own dismissive conduct give it real weight; but the memo predates the contract and reads to defenders as academic-politics reassurance, and no evidence shows the working case analyses were falsified. The whitewash charge is a serious, sourced argument, not a settled fact.

Category: UFOs & Aliens · Era: 1960s · First circulated: The memo surfaced inside the project in 1967 and became a public controversy in the spring of 1968, when NICAP broke with the committee, Donald Keyhoe circulated copies, and John G. Fuller's Look magazine article “Flying Saucer Fiasco” branded the project a $500,000 trick; the whitewash charge has recurred in UFO writing ever since · Believed by: UFO research organizations of the era (notably NICAP and APRO) and a set of credentialed scientist-critics, including atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald, astronomer J. Allen Hynek, dismissed committee member David Saunders, and later Stanford physicist Peter Sturrock; the charge is still cited by modern UAP advocates
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## Summary
Between 1966 and 1968 the University of Colorado carried out the first and largest government-backed scientific study of unidentified flying objects, funded by the U.S. Air Force and directed by the eminent physicist Edward U. Condon. Its 1,485-page report concluded that little of scientific value had come from twenty years of UFO study and that further work probably could not be justified. On the strength of that conclusion the Air Force shut down Project Blue Book in 1969. But the study was engulfed in scandal even before it finished. A 1966 internal memo by the project coordinator, Robert Low, spoke of a “trick” to make the work look objective while expecting to find nothing, two investigators who returned with positive findings were summarily fired, and major UFO groups denounced the whole exercise as a fix. This case file keeps two things apart: a real study, a real report, and a real, embarrassing memo; and the claim it rates, that the study was a deliberate, predetermined whitewash, which remains disputed.

## The claim
That the University of Colorado UFO study was never an honest inquiry but a rigged exercise: that its negative conclusion was decided in advance, that Robert Low's “trick” memo proves the outcome was engineered, that Edward Condon steered the project toward dismissal and purged investigators who found otherwise, and that the report therefore functioned as an official whitewash to justify ending government UFO investigation regardless of what the evidence actually showed.

## Origin and timeline
- 1966-08-09: Robert Low, an administrator who would coordinate the project, writes a memo to two University of Colorado officials weighing whether to accept the Air Force contract. It contains the line later at the center of the scandal: that “the trick” would be to design the study so it appears objective to the public while presenting the scientific community a group of non-believers with almost zero expectation of finding a saucer.
- 1966-10-06: The University of Colorado formally agrees to undertake the study for the Air Force, with physicist Edward U. Condon, a former director of the National Bureau of Standards, as scientific director. Funding, initially in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars, eventually rises past half a million.
- 1966-1968: A staff of scientists examines UFO reports, ultimately treating in depth only around 90 to 140 cases despite access to thousands of Air Force files. Roughly a third of the cases the team analyzed would remain unexplained in the final report, a fact critics said the conclusions understated.
- 1967-07: Atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald, a vocal proponent of taking UFO reports seriously, learns from a committee member of the Low memo sitting in the project's open files. He later writes to Condon quoting its lines, and the “trick” language begins to circulate among investigators.
- 1968-02: Condon fires staff members David Saunders and Norman Levine, who had grown critical of the project's direction and had helped spread the memo. Condon cites incompetence; the two say they were purged for disagreeing. Assistant director Robert Low departs amid the fallout.
- 1968-04-30: The National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), which had been cooperating with the study, severs its ties. Its director, Donald Keyhoe, circulates copies of the Low memo, framing the project as a foregone conclusion dressed up as science.
- 1968-05: John G. Fuller's article “Flying Saucer Fiasco” appears in Look magazine, publicizing the memo, the firings, and interviews with Saunders and Levine, and calling the project a $500,000 trick. The scandal reaches a national audience.
- 1969-01: The report, Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, is released publicly (a mass-market edition follows). Condon's summary concludes that nothing of scientific value has come from UFO study and that further work cannot be justified, even as the body of the report leaves many cases unexplained.
- 1969-12-17: Citing the Condon Report and a supporting review by the National Academy of Sciences, the Air Force announces the termination of Project Blue Book, ending official U.S. government investigation of UFOs after more than two decades.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: The Low memo proves the conclusion was fixed in advance: it explicitly describes a “trick” to fake objectivity while expecting to find nothing.
  Evidence: The memo is genuine, its wording is damning, and it is the strongest single piece of the case. But its meaning is contested rather than settled. Low wrote it in August 1966, before the contract was signed, as an internal argument to nervous administrators about whether the university should take on a fringe subject that risked its reputation. Defenders, including committee member David Saunders, argued that reading Low as a plotter is unfair, and Hynek suggested Low was mainly trying to sell the project to the administration. So the memo proves that at least one coordinator anticipated a negative result and worried about presentation. Whether that expectation was then imposed on the actual scientific analyses, which is the whitewash claim, the memo alone does not establish.
- Claim: Condon fired the two investigators who came back with positive findings, which is exactly what a cover-up looks like.
  Evidence: The firings of Saunders and Levine are documented, and the timing (after they helped circulate the memo and clashed with the leadership) is genuinely troubling. Condon called it incompetence; the two called it a purge for dissent, and considered a libel suit. The episode is real evidence of a poisoned, top-down project. It is not, by itself, proof that the science was rigged: personnel disputes, insubordination, and a director's hostility can coexist with case analyses that were done honestly. The firings show a dysfunctional, arguably prejudiced management, which is a lesser charge than a fabricated result.
- Claim: Condon's own conclusions contradicted his staff's findings, so the report's summary was a distortion imposed over the data.
  Evidence: Critics have a real point here. The body of the report left roughly thirty percent of examined cases unexplained, and some analysts wrote up individual cases they could not account for in prosaic terms. Condon's headline summary, that nothing of value had emerged and further study was unjustified, sat awkwardly on top of that. Scientist-critics such as McDonald and Sturrock argued the summary did not fairly represent the contents. This supports the softer charge that Condon's framing was skewed and dismissive. It stops short of showing the underlying analyses were falsified: the unexplained cases are in the published report for anyone to read, which is not how a total whitewash usually works.
- Claim: The whole thing was a foregone conclusion because the Air Force wanted a reason to end UFO investigation, and paid for the answer it needed.
  Evidence: The Air Force did fund the study and did use its conclusions to close Project Blue Book, and it plainly wanted out of a costly, embarrassing subject. That is motive, and it is real. But motive is not the same as a rigged execution. The National Academy of Sciences reviewed the report independently and endorsed its methodology and conclusions, which a bald fix would have had to survive. And an agency wanting a subject closed does not demonstrate that the several dozen scientists who did the case work invented their results. The funding and the convenient outcome are grounds for suspicion, not proof of fabrication.
- Claim: Defenders say the study was honest science, so the whitewash charge is baseless.
  Evidence: This overstates the other side just as badly. The memo, the firings, and Condon's dismissive public conduct are not nothing, and pretending the project was a model of neutral inquiry ignores documented facts. The fair reading is that the study was compromised in its leadership and framing while still producing a large body of real case analysis, much of it published warts and all. The evidence genuinely cuts both ways here, and honest people have landed on opposite sides of it for more than fifty years.

## Why people believe it
- The smoking-gun document is real. Most conspiracy claims lack a memo in the principals' own words; this one has the word “trick” on the page, written by the project coordinator, before the work began. A believer does not have to invent anything to feel the outcome was arranged, which gives the charge unusual staying power.
- The firings fit the story perfectly. Two investigators who pushed back were dismissed for incompetence and said it was really for dissent. A purge of the people who disagreed is precisely the shape a cover-up is expected to take, and it turned insiders into public accusers, lending the charge credentialed voices.
- Respected scientists, not just enthusiasts, made the case. J. Allen Hynek, James McDonald, and Peter Sturrock were serious researchers who argued the report's conclusions did not match its own contents. When critics with that standing say the summary betrayed the data, the whitewash reading gains an authority that fringe complaints never carry.
- The result was suspiciously convenient. The report gave the Air Force exactly the justification it wanted to shut down Project Blue Book and stop investigating UFOs. An outcome that neatly serves the funder's interest naturally invites the suspicion that the outcome was the point.
- It fits a durable template of institutional dismissal. To an audience that already believes official science waves away anomalies it finds inconvenient, the Condon affair is the founding example: the study that closed the government's UFO files is remembered less for its analyses than for the memo that seemed to give the game away.

## Open questions
- How far Low's 1966 expectation of a negative result actually shaped the individual case analyses, as opposed to only the framing and the summary, is not resolved by the documents and is the crux of the whole dispute.
- Why Condon's summary conclusions gave so little weight to the roughly one-third of cases his own team left unexplained remains a fair criticism of the report, separate from whether the analyses themselves were sound.
- Whether the summary firing of Saunders and Levine was genuinely about competence or about dissent has never been settled to everyone's satisfaction, and the two sides told incompatible stories.
- Whether a study that was compromised in its leadership and framing can still have produced reliable underlying science is the deeper question the case leaves open, and reasonable people continue to answer it differently.

## Sources
- Condon Committee, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condon_Committee
- Condon Report, Encyclopaedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Condon-Report
- CU the site of one of the last government-commissioned reports on UFOs. What does it say?, University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder Today) (2021): https://www.colorado.edu/today/2021/06/09/cu-site-one-last-government-commissioned-reports-ufos-what-does-it-say
- Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (full text), National Capital Area Skeptics (1968): https://condon.ncas.org/
- Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (official report), Defense Technical Information Center (1968): https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/AD0680975.pdf
- The Condon UFO Study: A Trick or a Conspiracy?, Skeptical Inquirer (Center for Inquiry) (1986): https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/1986/07/22165324/p42.pdf
- The Condon Report on UFOs, HowStuffWorks: https://science.howstuffworks.com/space/aliens-ufos/ufo-government7.htm

Rated by The Conspiratory, a neutral, sourced encyclopedia of conspiracy theories. Full page: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/condon-report