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Dr. Edward U. Condon, the physicist who headed Colorado Univer- sity’s Air Force-financed two-year UFO study, has been criticized be- cause he devoted part of his time to examining the claims of the controversial contactees. He earned the undying wrath of the cultists when his final report was published in January 1969, and he stressed an anti-extraterrestrial conclusion. He asserted that his scientific teams had failed to find any evidence of extraterrestrial origin or of serious UFO censorship on the part of the government. But both of these myths have been implanted too deeply in the UFO literature to be killed off so easily. The Library of Congress’ objective bibliography even had sections devoted to news management, censorship and CIA plots. Was all of this just another government whitewash, as the cultists contend? In April 1969, Dr. Condon delivered a speech before the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, in which he was gently derisive of the popular UFO beliefs: ‘Some UFOs may be such [extraterrestrial] visitors, it may be postulated,’’ Dr. Condon said, ‘‘and some writers go so far as to say that they actually are. To discover clear, unambiguous evidence on this point would be a scientific discovery of the first magnitude, one which I would be quite happy to make. We found no such evidence, and so state in our report.... We concluded that it is not worthwhile to carry on a continuing study of UFOs in the manner which has been done so far: that of going out into the field to interview persons who say they have seen something peculiar. The difficulty about using objective means of study lies in the rarity of the apparitions, their short duration, and the tendency of observers not to report their experience until long after it has ended.... These difficulties led us to conclude that it is quite unproductive of results of scientific value to study UFOs in the traditional manner. But, contrary to popular belief, we do not rule out all Livaenn naan. future study. “Perhaps we need a National Magic Agency (pronounced ‘enema’) to make a large and expensive study of all these matters, including the future scientific study of UFOs, if any,” he concluded. The real UFO story must encompass all of the many manifestations being observed. It is a story of ghosts and phantoms and strange mental aberrations; of an invisible world that surrounds us and occasionally engulfs us; of prophets and prophecies, and gods and demons. It is a world of illusion and hallucination where the unreal seems very real, and where reality itself is distorted by strange forces which can seemingly manipulate space, time and physical matter—forces that are almost entirely beyond our powers of comprehension. To Hell with the Answer! / 41