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‘Project Blue Book’ Is Based on a True U.F.O. Story. Here It Is.

By Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean

• Jan. 15, 2019

Featuring a Russian spy murder, a self-immolation, gun-toting government thugs and other fanciful plot devices, “Project Blue Book,” History’s popular new series on the Air Force’s program to investigate and debunk U.F.O.s, is not your historian’s Project Blue Book.

We viewed the first six episodes from the standpoint of writers who have long worked on the serious side of U.F.O.s. We broke the December 2017 New York Times exclusive on a secret Pentagon program investigating the phenomenon, with our colleague Helene Cooper. Leslie Kean wrote the Times 2010 best-seller “U.F.O.s: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record.” Ralph Blumenthal has written about U.F.O.s for Vanity Fair as well as The Times .

So, despite the embellishments, we were interested to discover parallels between the TV version and the historical and current reality.

[ Read the 2017 Times report on the Pentagon’s secret U.F.O. program. ]

The History series predictably sensationalizes and overdramatizes case investigations and the historical figures involved, adding many story elements that simply never happened. It’s already hard enough for those trying to understand the truth about government involvement with U.F.O.s without mixing fact and fiction.

Nonetheless, melodrama aside, the real story is there:

Project Blue Book was the code name for an Air Force program set up in 1952, after numerous U.F.O. sightings during the Cold War era, to explain away or debunk as many reports as possible in order to mitigate possible panic and shield the public from a genuine national security problem: an apparently technological phenomenon that was beyond human control and was not Russian, yet represented an unfathomable potential threat.

The central character of the TV series, the prominent astronomer J. Allen Hynek, played by Aidan Gillen, was recruited as Blue Book’s scientific consultant and was indeed initially committed to explaining away flying saucers as natural phenomena or mistaken identifications. But he gradually realized that the bizarre objects were real and needed further scientific attention. (Though he never saw a supposed alien creature floating in a tank or crashed in a plane while recreating a reported U.F.O. dogfight, as depicted in the series.)

While Hynek was involved, Blue Book compiled reports of 12,618 sightings of unidentified flying objects, of which 701 remain unexplained to this day.

But what’s most important to study during that era is what occurred outside Project Blue Book, to the extent that it has been revealed. When we reported on the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which began in 2007, we offered a glimpse into a similar scenario today: military cases being investigated and filmed without the public knowing. This time, however, there was no public agency to accommodate reports of incidents, even when hundreds of witnesses were involved.

We learned through documents from the Pentagon program, and from interviews with participants, that the mystery of the elusive flying objects is still far from solved , and that not enough was being done to address that problem almost 50 years since the close of Blue Book.

It all began in 1947. Lt. General Nathan Twining, the commander of Air Materiel Command, sent a secret memo on “Flying Discs” to the commanding general of the Army Air Forces at the Pentagon. Twining stated that “the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.” The silent, disc-like objects demonstrated “extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and motion which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar.”

A new project, code-named “Sign,” based at Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) outside Dayton, Ohio, was given the mandate to collect U.F.O. reports and assess whether the phenomenon was a threat to national security. With Russia ruled out as the source, the staff wrote a top secret “Estimate of the Situation,” concluding that, based on the evidence, U.F.O.s most likely had an interplanetary origin.

According to government officials at the time, the estimate was rejected by General Hoyt Vandenberg, the Air Force chief of staff. From then on, the proponents of the off-planet hypothesis lost ground, with Vandenberg and others insisting that conventional explanations be found.

Project Sign eventually evolved into Project Blue Book, with the aim of convincing the public that flying saucers could be explained.

Yet behind the scenes, authorities grappled with something sobering: well-documented U.F.O. encounters involved multiple trained observers, radar data, photographs, marks on the ground and physical effects on airplanes.

In 1952, the office of Maj. Gen. John Samford, the Air Force director of intelligence, briefed the F.B.I., saying it was “not entirely impossible that the objects sighted may possibly be ships from another planet such as Mars,” according to government documents. Air Intelligence had largely ruled out an earthly source, the F.B.I. memo reported.

National defense concerns were mounting as well. After Air Force planes scrambled to intercept brilliant objects seen and picked up on radar over Washington in 1952, Samford called a news conference to calm the country.

He announced that between 1,000 and 2,000 reports had been analyzed and that most had been explained. “However,” he conceded, a certain percentage “have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things. It is this group of observations that we now are attempting to resolve.”

He said no conclusions had been drawn, but played down any “conceivable threat” to the United States.

Later that year, however, H. Marshall Chadwell, the assistant director of scientific intelligence for the C.I.A., concluded in a memo to the C.I.A. director, Walter Bedell Smith, that “sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles.”

By 1953, authorities were concerned that communication channels were becoming dangerously clogged by hundreds of U.F.O. reports. Even false alarms could be perilous, defense agencies worried, since the Soviets might take advantage of the situation by simulating or staging a U.F.O. wave and then attack.

Documents show the C.I.A. then devised a plan for a “national policy,” as to “what should be told the public regarding the phenomenon, in order to minimize risk of panic.”

After a closed-door session with a scientific advisory panel chaired by H.P. Robertson from the California Institute of Technology, the C.I.A. issued a secret report recommending a broad educational program for all intelligence agencies, with the aim of “training and debunking.”

Training meant more public education on how to identify known objects in the sky. “The use of true cases showing first the ‘mystery’ and then the ‘explanation’ would be forceful,” the report said. Debunking “would be accomplished by mass media such as television, motion pictures, and popular articles.”

That plan involved using psychologists, advertising experts, amateur astronomers and even Disney cartoons to create propaganda to reduce public interest. And civilian U.F.O. groups should be “watched,” the report stated, because of their “great influence on mass thinking if widespread sightings should occur.”

The Robertson Panel Report was classified until 1975, five years after Blue Book was shut down. But its legacy endures in the aura of ridicule surrounding U.F.O. reports, inhibiting scientific progress.

“The implication in the Panel Report was that U.F.O.s were a nonsense (nonscience) matter, to be debunked at all costs,” Hynek wrote. “It made the subject of U.F.O.s scientifically unrespectable.”

Hynek , the former U.F.O. skeptic, eventually concluded that they were a real phenomenon in dire need of scientific attention, with hundreds of cases in the Blue Book files still unexplained. Even many of the “closed” cases were resolved with ridiculous, often infuriating explanations, sometimes by Hynek himself.

“The entire Blue Book operation was a foul-up based on the categorical premise that the incredible things reported could not possibly have any basis in fact,” he wrote in the 1970s, when he was finally free to speak the truth.

When Blue Book closed in late 1969, the Air Force flatly lied to the American people, issuing a fact sheet claiming that no U.F.O. had ever been a threat to national security; that U.F.O.s did not represent “technological developments or principles beyond the range of present day scientific knowledge”; and that there was no evidence that they were “extraterrestrial vehicles.”

(Just a few years earlier, in 1967, a glowing red oval-shaped object hovered over Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, and all 10 of the facility’s underground nuclear missiles became disabled almost simultaneously while the U.F.O. was present, according to interviews with witnesses and official government reports. Technicians could find no conventional explanation.)

But whatever the Air Force told the public, it didn’t actually stop investigating U.F.O.s. A once-classified memo, issued secretly in October 1969, a few months before the termination of Blue Book, revealed that regulations were already in place to investigate U.F.O. reports that were “not part of the Blue Book system.” The memo, written by Carroll H. Bolender, an Air Force brigadier general, went on to say that “reports of U.F.O.s which could affect national security would continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedures designed for this purpose.”

Clearly, government agencies continued to have some level of involvement in U.F.O. investigations in the decades following — and to the present. Despite government statements to the contrary, once-secret official documents include detailed reports of dramatic U.F.O. events abroad. Many cases at home were not investigated, including a 2006 event in which a disc-shaped object hovered over O’Hare Airport for more than five minutes and shot straight up through the clouds at an incredible speed.

Our reporting in 2017, which led to briefings for members of Congressional committees, showed that not much has changed since the close of Project Blue Book.

Scientists may know more about the behavior and characteristics of U.F.O.s and are closer to understanding the physics of how the technology operates, according to A.A.T.I.P. documents and interviews. But the government still makes every attempt to keep investigations and conclusions secret, while denying any involvement to American citizens.

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Episode list

Project blue book.

S1.E1 ∙ The Fuller Dogfight

S1.E2 ∙ The Flatwoods Monster

S1.E3 ∙ The Lubbock Lights

S1.E4 ∙ Operation Paperclip

S1.E5 ∙ Foo Fighters

S1.E6 ∙ The Green Fireballs

S1.E7 ∙ The Scoutmaster

S1.E8 ∙ War Games

S1.E9 ∙ Abduction

S1.E10 ∙ The Washington Merry-Go-Round

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Project Blue Book

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Cast & Crew

David O'Leary

Aidan Gillen

Dr. J. Allen Hynek

Michael Malarkey

Capt. Michael Quinn

Neal McDonough

Gen. James Harding

Michael Harney

Gen. Hugh Valentine

Laura Mennell

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Den of Geek

Project Blue Book Has a Plan for Season 3

The writer and showrunner for History’s Project Blue Book have season three all worked out, if they can find a new home for the show.

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Season two of History’s Project Blue Book is over, and unless the show is picked up elsewhere, this could be the end of our UFO hunting dynamic duo. We caught up with Project Blue Book creator/writer/executive producer David O’Leary and showrunner/executive Producer Sean Jablonski to talk about what’s next in an interview Den of Geek live-streamed on YouTube and Facebook simultaneously.

“History has sort of opted out of the scripted series business,” says Jablonski. “Which is in some ways good for us, because the studio that produces and ultimately pays for the show is committed to finding another home for it like on a streaming service, which we feel could present a larger audience for us.”


Jablonski pointed out that Den of Geek got it right in a recent article covering the cancelation in that the cancelation was not due to performance. He says he had tons of calls from the network, letting him know it had to do with the “larger decision at a corporate level” to get out of scripted TV.

O’Leary says he looks forward to working with a streaming platform, addressing a concern some fans shared.


“It is getting harder and harder to tell a tele-scripted story when you have to go to commercial breaks,” says O’Leary. “I think on History we have to cut to five commercial breaks.”

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The show’s fanbase has grown over the past two seasons, and they want the show back. A fan named Carsten Krikorka, who joined our Facebook chat room during the interview, has started a change.org site to get signatures for keeping the show on the air. So far, they have over 10,000 signatures and growing. There has also been a hashtag, #SaveBlueBook, that fans have been using on social media.

Another reason fans are itching for new episodes is due to the significant cliffhanger at the end of season two. One of the main characters, Captain Michael Quinn, got blown up while in a submarine checking out strange lights under the ocean. O’Leary has already leaked that the hunt for Quinn is where season three was going to begin.


“Hynek and Quinn, ‘Hynequinn’ as they are called, they’re our franchise,” explained Jablonski. “We had a strong plan on how we wanted to approach season three at the end of season two. It wasn’t something we were going to stretch out, even going into season three.”

“I can share with you right now, at Project Blue Book we had a writers room, we wrote all of season three,” Jablonski revealed. “We can tell you – we are not going to tell you – but we have the entire season laid out. Which is also where it is like, ‘ugh.’ We have all of these great stories to tell. Where we left off was a jumping point into bigger and better things.”


“Yeah, Sean, you hit it,” O’Leary added. “I mean, like, that is something for fans to know, and honestly, frankly, potential new homes for our show to know, is that this season of Project Blue Book was knocked out. We are at the end of season three in our minds.”

So what can we expect in season three, should there be one?

“We don’t want to say too much,” says O’Leary. “But we will just say that in 1954 there was something known as the worldwide UFO panic and anyone who knows UFO history knows it went all the way around the world. Project Blue Book looked into cases around the world as well. UFOs are a global phenomenon, and that never became more true in 1954.”

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“A global phenomenon and a global conspiracy,” Jablonski added.

The conversation then turned to how many seasons they have in them should the show get picked up. Decades worth says, Jablonski.


“You always want to have as many as you can,” Jablonski explained. “The great thing is Blue Book had 12,000 cases, so we have an endless supply. ” 


“The joke has always been six seasons and a movie,” Jablonski continued. “I think we can do seven seasons and a movie easily.”

Fans in the chat also wanted to know more about what happens to some of their favorite characters. 


When it comes to Mimi, Hynek’s wife, “she gets very involved with the UFO Phenomenon moving forward,” says Jablonski.

“She is not just able to talk to Allen [Hynek] about stuff, she also has her own information,” Jablonski continued. “Some of the information she’s learning can also be in conflict with what he is figuring out.”


“She explores aspects of the phenomenon that Hynek isn’t exploring,” O’Leary added.


Others wanted to know about Susie, the Russian spy. The end of the season left her in a bit of a bind. A viewer asked, “Do you have a scenario to get Susie out of her fix?”


Jablonski responded, “The short answer is ‘Yes.'”


O’Leary gave up a bit more: “I think I teased that we haven’t seen the last of Susie at some point, we have some wonderful ideas for her.”


Finally, the mysterious Man in Black, aka Michael, aka The Unseen, came up. When asked if he will return, O’Leary responded: “Not only do I have a soft spot for the Unseen character and always have, Ian Tracey (the actor who portrays Unseen) is amazing.”


Mirroring Jablonski’s earlier response, O’Leary then added, “the short answer is ‘Yes.'”

“Aiden, on our final podcast for season two, one of the last things he said in our podcast kind of spoke to what he felt was the importance of the Unseen/William character,” O’Leary recounted. “He sees [Unseen] as being a bit of the soul of the show, a bit of the embodiment of the mystery. Sean and I both agree with that.”


There is an audience for Project Blue Book , and they already have season three written. It seems like a no brainer; the show is worth picking up. Hopefully, O’Leary and Jablonski and the team will find a new home. We’ll let you know how it goes.

Alejandro Rojas | @alejandrotrojas

Alejandro Rojas writes and blogs about science, entertainment, and the paranormal. Alejandro has spent many hours in the field investigating anomalous phenomena up close and personal.…

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‘project blue book’ cast and creators talk ufo sightings and alien mysteries: “i don’t look at the night sky the same way”.

The team behind History Channel's 10-episode drama 'Project Blue Book,' based on the Air Force's 1950s program that investigated UFOs, delves into the true backstories behind the series and how they came aboard.

By Bryn Sandberg

Bryn Sandberg

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History Channel leaped into the unknown with Project Blue Book , its 10-episode drama series based on the Air Force’s 1950s program investigating UFOs. The show, which returns for its second season Jan. 21, has turned out to be one of the top-rated cable series of 2019, averaging 3.3 million viewers — a welcome surprise for David O’Leary. The creator says he sold the network three years ago on his pitch for “a real-life X Files set in the time of Mad Men ” that would follow the astronomer who spearheaded the top-secret government program, Dr. J. Allen Hynek (played by Game of Thrones’ Aidan Gillen). O’Leary, producer-writer Sean Jablonski and actors Gillen, Laura Mennell, Michael Malarkey and Neal McDonough delve into the true backstories behind the series, valuing “authenticity over accuracy” and their own UFO sightings.

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David, what made you want to make a show about UFOs?

DAVID O’LEARY It’s a subject matter that has always fascinated me. I’ve had a lifelong obsession with UFOs and with the question, “Are we alone in the universe?” I’ve just always felt that the phenomena was real. It always rang true to me. I’d read books or watched documentaries on UFOs, and you could tell that the people who saw what they claim to have seen were telling the truth.

Aidan, you played Littlefinger on Game of Thrones for many years. What made you want to portray this real-life character?

AIDAN GILLEN I’d played a villainous role [in Thrones ] and a few other villains along the way. So I made this conscious decision a while back to try to find some warmer, lighter characters to play. And I had a similar interest in UFOs from an early age.

Why is that?

GILLEN Close Encounters of the Third Kind remains one of my favorite all-time films. When I was 10 or 11, it gave me a real interest in the subject. And actually, one of the first things I did [when I got this part] was I got out my three-disc Blu-ray set and watched the original theatrical trailer for Close Encounters . It’s kind of like a documentary in itself, and Hynek is the first or second person to show up. I was like, “All right, this is meant to be.”

O’LEARY They actually rereleased Close Encounters of the Third Kind the weekend before the writers room opened, which was nuts. My wife and I went to see it the night before, and the next day we started the room.

How did the rest of you join the project?

MICHAEL MALARKEY I’ve always had an awareness of what was going on with some of the big UFO cases, but in no way was I deeply fascinated. I just wanted to do something completely different from the last thing I did [Malarkey is best known for his role on Vampire Diaries ] and felt like [Captain Michael Quinn, who works with Hynek] was a really complicated and interesting character to play.

SEAN JABLONSKI The first time all of us met Michael was over Skype. He’s also a musician, so he was in Paris backstage, getting ready to play a set.

O’LEARY We thought it was so badass.

LAURA MENNELL I wish that was my life.

Laura and Neil, how did you board the series?

MENNELL I thought it was such an exciting project because it is really about one of the biggest mysteries of all time: Is there intelligent life out there other than ourselves? I think our show has a really compelling argument for yes, but it’s also entertaining.

NEAL MCDONOUGH For me, I think Aidan hit on it. Growing up in the ’70s, there were so many great shows —  Star Trek, Star Wars, Close Encounters — thinking about what else could be out there. So I’ve always been fascinated with science fiction.

MENNELL  I also loved the female aspect of it, being a woman in the 1950s. It was a bit of a different time when women had to fit a certain mold, and Mimi goes through a nice arc. She was a little stuck in her sort of rut of domesticity at the beginning, and little by little she starts to become a stronger and ballsier.

Since the show is based on the real-life Air Force program, how much research did you do into it?

O’LEARY A lot. Project Blue Book investigated over 12,000 cases, 700 of which remain unexplained. Hynek wrote a number of books, which were immensely helpful. Then the first Project Blue Book director wrote a tell-all about his experiences.

JABLONSKI Before he mysteriously died of a heart attack at 38.

O’LEARY Yeah, there were a number of mysterious deaths surrounding Project Blue Book. We explore some of those as well.

JABLONSKI  But more than just Project Blue Book, there’s America in the 1950s. It’s understanding the fabric of society at the time, how women were treated back then and what was on the military’s mind with the Cold War and Korea and all that stuff. So beyond the cases, it’s understanding how it all fits together in that world.

MALARKEY  The [series] would be showing the infrastructure of the whole control-the-narrative concept and fake news and all of that. I feel like it’s really timely and relevant in that aspect. We’re getting to see a time when dealing with panic and hysteria was a huge deal. Now more than ever we are realizing just how fragile the media is, in a way. And this is almost some of the beginnings of that.

JABLONSKI:  The original fake news is what we like to say.

Hynek’s son, Paul, was a consultant on the show, right? What was it like to have him involved?

GILLEN The first day Paul and his brother Joel came onto set, it was kind of terrifying. It was like, are we going to get away with this?

JABLONSKI You’re playing Dad.

GILLEN But they are very forgiving and understand it’s about finding a medium between you and the real person.

O’LEARY They’d always come up with little things like, “My dad really wouldn’t say that,” or, “My mom would do it this way.”

MENNELL Paul even gave me his mother’s pin that I wear on an episode in the first season. It’s nice because the Hyneks have been so much a part of our show.

The show dramatizes real events. How do you strike that balance between fact and fiction?

JABLONSKI  Every case we do is based on real stories, so you do carry a sense of responsibility and feel like you owe it to the process to dig in, research and then turn it back out as something that is both satisfying historically and as a TV show. We always say authenticity over accuracy because we’re not making a documentary.

What can you tease about season two?

JABLONSKI The second season, how we approached it, was that the mystery was up in the sky. This year, it’s about going back to find out where it began on the ground. That starts in Roswell for us. So if it was about trying to understand what was up there before, this second season is about trying to understand where the conspiracy to cover up what was known and is known about what’s going on in the sky takes place.

O’LEARY I think Sean would say the conspiracy is the case. Each case kind of builds on that, and you get more of a piece of what’s going on while these incredible events are happening all at the same time.

MALARKEY  It’s a colorful season — not that last season wasn’t, but I feel like we just have these rich backdrops going on. We have the desert, we have the deep woods, we’ve got the vast open water. I think it’s just a visual treat, as well as a dynamic, nuanced character study.

GILLEN  I feel like I’m having a little bit more fun, as well. 

O’LEARY Yeah, season one was a drag. ( Laughs .) Just kidding.

Has anyone had a UFO sighting of their own?

O’LEARY Yeah, I had something weird happen. I was walking a couple blocks away from my home near Park La Brea in Los Angeles. I was on the phone with a friend, and I saw what looked like a teardrop-shaped green self-luminescent ball of light kind of emerge out of the trees. In my mind’s eye, it sort of started to move toward me. I’ll be completely honest, I panicked. I ran underneath it. It was completely silent, and then it just flickered and continued to move on. It was the strangest thing I’ve seen. Even now when I take out the garbage at night, I’m a little like, “Eh …”

MALARKEY Every time he sees that street lamp.

O’LEARY I didn’t share it for a while partially because I was such a coward about how I behaved when I saw it, but also because I was like, “Oh, it feels so convenient that I’m writing a UFO show and I have this UFO experience.” But it was very strange.

MALARKEY Just think about the thousands upon thousands of cases that are reported of people who see things, who second-guess what they’ve seen or think that someone’s going to think they’re a weirdo for talking about it.

JABLONSKI When I was 10 in New York City, I saw something that stopped me on the street. It’s funny, I look back on it now and am like, “I was in New York City looking up. It couldn’t have just been me.” But I remember going home and telling my parents. It was so clear. It was these hexagonal shapes. I actually drew a picture of it when I got back. I remember staring up, looking at this thing, going, “Is anybody else seeing this?” You do that mental thing where you’re like, “Am I seeing this? I am seeing this.” So I was always interested after that. I actually went to Peru on a solo trip to Machu Picchu to see if the aliens built it, just because I had to go. I needed to see it for myself.

MCDONOUGH And?

JABLONSKI I was like, “I could see people doing this.” But there was another thing called Sacsayhuaman. It’s this old military fort where there are 20-ton stones that are smooth and fit together to where you can’t even slide a sheet of paper between them. That I was like, “Oh, aliens built that for sure.” Nobody can explain that stuff.

O’LEARY There are some strange structures, like Stonehenge. Why bring all those heavy stones into a field in Southern England?

MCDONOUGH I don’t look at the night sky the same way anymore after starting Project Blue Book.

Interview edited for length and clarity.

This partnered feature is produced by Hollywood Reporter editorial staff in conjunction with a paid brand partnership with History Channel.

A version of this story first appeared in the Jan. 8 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe .

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The Fuller Dogfight

Ohio State astrophysicist Dr. Allen Hynek is recruited by the Air Force into their top-secret program investigating UFOs called Project Blue Book. Partnered with Captain Michael Quinn, they investigate the case of a military pilot who survived a dogfight with an alien craft. Based on the “Gorman Dogfight” case.

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The Air Force Asked This Man to Investigate UFOs—Then Pushed Him Away After What He Found

His job was to uncover secrets from the unknown. But his curiosity opened doors that the government preferred to keep closed.

Do you think the U.S. government is hiding, and possibly reverse-engineering, extraterrestrial technology? Think again. Or better yet, don’t think about it at all. Nothing to see here.

That’s the underlying message of a report released last month by the Department of Defense. The 63-page “ Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) ” concludes that the DoD’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) “found no evidence that any [U.S. Government] investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology.”

The AARO, as The Guardian summarizes, is “a government office established in 2022 to detect and, as necessary, mitigate threats including ‘anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects’.”

This report comes on the heels of, and in contradiction to, what was arguably the most high-profile hearing on UAPs —formerly known as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs—in decades: the August 2023 testimony of “whistleblower” Dave Grusch.

In the bombshell hearing, Grusch, a former member of the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force, claimed that he had been made aware of a “multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program.” But his claims were never substantiated, and while the new report never mentions Grusch by name, it does offer plausible explanations for the phenomena he described in his testimony.

This is hardly the first government report to debunk stories about little green men and their strange flying saucers. So, why do Americans keep clinging to conspiracy theories about extraterrestrial visitors? Blame science fiction, the AARO report says:

“A consistent theme in popular culture involves a particularly persistent narrative that the USG—or a secretive organization within it—recovered several off-world spacecraft and extraterrestrial biological remains, that it operates a program or programs to reverse engineer the recovered technology, and that it has conspired since the 1940s to keep this effort hidden from the United States Congress and the American public.

AARO recognizes that many people sincerely hold versions of these beliefs which are based on their perception of past experiences, the experiences of others whom they trust, or media and online outlets they believe to be sources of credible and verifiable information. The proliferation of television programs, books, movies, and the vast amount of internet and social media content centered on UAP-related topics most likely has influenced the public conversation on this topic, and reinforced these beliefs within some sections of the population.”

The X-Files and the internet helped guide curious people toward the fringes of ufology . But to fully understand the ongoing public skepticism regarding the government-provided explanations about aliens, we must consider the man who was once responsible for upholding these “official” stories—and examine his stunning evolution from a fellow skeptic to the world’s leading UFO advocate.

Who Was J. Allen Hynek?

Josef Allen Hynek , who was born on May 1, 1910, developed an interest in the cosmos following an episode of illness during his childhood. The sickness steered his curiosity away from following in the footsteps of his mother and father—a schoolteacher and cigar manufacturer, respectively—and toward the universe. Biography writes:

“An introduction to the stars came after Hynek was bedridden with scarlet fever at age seven: Having run through their supply of children's books to read, his mom turned to textbooks, with a high school edition on astronomy capturing the boy’s attention.”

From an early age, Hynek’s passion for science was mixed with a penchant for mystery and a pursuit of philosophical thought. He had “an interest in more esoteric subjects, particularly the works of the Rosicrucian secret societies and hermetic philosopher Rudolf Steiner,” according to Biography .

In 1934, as a doctoral student, Hynek contributed to observations of the Nova Herculis supernova at Perkins Observatory in Ohio. By 1936, he joined Ohio State University’s Physics and Astronomy Department. His research over the next 12 years culminated in his appointment as director of the university’s McMillin Observatory.

And that’s when the U.S. government came calling—with an unusual request.

How Did J. Allen Hynek Become Involved With UFOs?

In the waning days of World War II, American fighter pilots reported seeing aircraft that were unlike any previously encountered in combat . Some described “orange, flowing lights,” while another pilot “saw a red-ish, wingless, cigar-shape object.”

These accounts reached the media, and a population exhausted by war both wondered and worried about the tales of the strange aircraft. But the occurrences were ultimately attributed to “electrostatic or electromagnetic phenomena.”

The incident involving pilot Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947, however, wasn’t as readily explained—and, more crucially, it wasn’t as easily dismissed. As PopMech previously summarized:

“While searching for a Marine Corps C-46 transport plane , experienced pilot Kenneth Arnold diverted from his original flight path to help search the southwest slope of Mount Rainier. During the search, Arnold observed nine “peculiar-looking” and possibly “completely round” objects flying in a formation that reminded him of geese. It was later estimated they were flying in excess of 1,000 miles per hour. When he reported it (and assuming they were a new type of jet or experimental military aircraft), the Army Air Corps dismissed it as a mirage or hallucination.”

When Arnold believed the Army dismissed his claims too lightly, he reached out to the press. His discussion with Bill Bequette from the East Oregonian newspaper resulted in Bequette creating the term “flying saucers” to describe the unusual objects Arnold reported seeing.

America’s intelligence apparatus was still nascent at the time; the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) dissolved in 1945, and its successor, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), wouldn’t form until three months after Arnold reported his sighting. If there were mysterious objects flying in America’s airspace, the U.S. didn’t know where they could be coming from: The USSR? Enemies abroad? Aliens from another world?

It was crucial, then, to investigate whether these claims had any truth to them, and just as important to reassure a nervous American public that there was no cause for alarm (even if that might not have been true).

The U.S. Air Force enlisted Hynek to serve as an “astronomical consultant” for “Project Sign,” its initiative dedicated to examining the multitude of reports. Throughout Project Sign, Hynek meticulously analyzed each account of unusual aerial occurrences and categorized them accordingly. Per Biography :

“There were those which were simply astronomical observations, like the appearance of a meteor, those explained by meteorology, like an unusually shaped cloud, and those which captured accounts of man-made objects, like balloons. That left about 20 percent with no clear explanation...”

Hynek’s later writings suggest that he had hoped for additional investigations to address the questions posed by the remaining 20 percent of unexplained cases. However, the U.S. government, apprehensive about public fears during the Cold War and the potential for those fears to be manipulated, preferred to make such questions go away. And so, Project Sign evolved into “Project Grudge.”

“The staff,” the Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena summarizes, “especially those who seemed to lean towards belief in the ‘interplanetary’ origin of UFOs, were reportedly purged from the organization.”

Project Grudge released only one report , in August 1949. “There is no evidence that objects reported upon are the result of an advanced scientific foreign development; and, therefore they constitute no direct threat to the national security,” the report determined. It concluded by recommending that “the investigation and study of reports of unidentified flying objects be reduced in scope.”

Hynek, disillusioned with the direction the investigations took, characterized Project Grudge as a “public relations campaign.”

What Was Project Blue Book?

Project Grudge’s conclusions failed to quell concerns about what people now referred to as “unidentified flying objects,” or UFOs. So the Air Force resumed its investigations once more, this time in its most famous form: “ Project Blue Book .”

The Air Force again brought in Hynek for Project Blue Book, permitting him to actually conduct field investigations into these phenomena himself. Hynek’s perspective on the extraterrestrial theories regarding the unexplained sightings evolved from his days with Project Sign. As Biography observes:

“While he had harbored plenty of skepticism the first time around, he found his assumptions challenged by the rational recollections of witnesses, and began thinking about the legitimate scientific study of these 'Unidentified Flying Objects' or 'UFOs.'”

However, Hynek quickly realized that he was seen more as an instrument to dismiss alien speculation than as a scientist tasked with exploring such possibilities. As Biography notes , “By the 1960s, Hynek found himself in conflict with the restrictive supervision of the Air Force.”

One particularly embarrassing incident for Hynek came in 1966, when he was sent to investigate “reports of unusual lights in separate areas of Michigan over successive nights.” Hurried to provide an explanation and pressed to steer clear of extraterrestrial theories, Hynek was compelled to suggest publicly that the sightings might be attributed to “swamp gas.”

The term “swamp gas” became a proto-meme of the mid-60s, and House Minority Leader (and future president) Gerald Ford demanded answers for the seemingly shoddy investigation. “Called to testify,” Biography notes, “Hynek used the occasion to argue for an extensive, transparent study of UFOs.”

Hynek broke from the directives of the Air Force, and just three years later, Project Blue Book was completely terminated. But that didn’t stop the astronomer.

What Did J. Allen Hynek Do After Project Blue Book?

Freed from the constraints of the Air Force, Hynek initiated a public campaign to promote the rigorous scientific investigation of what he called “ufology.” This effort first materialized as his 1972 book, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry .

Hynek wrote about his philosophy on the study of UFOs, his observations from decades working on Project Sign and Project Blue Book, and his scale for classifying UFO sightings, which involved both distant and close encounters. He classified distant observations as either “nocturnal lights,” “daylight discs,” or for those not seen directly by human eyes, “radar/visuals.”

The other observations—“close encounters”—also broke down into three categories. HISTORY summarizes:

“Close Encounters of the First Kind meant UFOs seen at a close enough range to make out some details. In a Close Encounter of the Second Kind, the UFO had a physical effect, such as scorching trees, frightening animals or causing car motors to suddenly conk out. In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, witnesses reported seeing occupants in or near a UFO.”

That final category inspired the title of the classic 1977 Steven Spielberg film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind . Hynek was reportedly paid for the use of the title and for his role as a consultant on the movie, and he also made a brief appearance in the Best Picture nominee. Hynek also appeared on shows like “The Dick Cavett Show” and “In Search Of...,” spoke on the university lecture circuit, and even presented on UFOs to the United Nations. His life’s work inspired a two-season TV series that aired in the 2010s, aptly named Project Blue Book .

Crucially, while Hynek openly discussed the limitations he faced during his tenure with the Air Force and was forthright about its apparent lack of genuine interest in investigating the possibility of alien encounters, his written work never fully embraced conspiracy theories. That wouldn’t be true for those who came after him.

What Is J. Allen Hynek’s UFO Legacy?

In 1986, the year Hynek died, conspiracy theorist George C. Andrews published Extra-Terrestrials Among Us , a book that incorporated ideas of ufology into existing ideas of government conspiracies and secret organizations. In Andrews’ grand vision of a global conspiracy, he claimed extraterrestrials were behind the killing of President John F. Kennedy .

In 1991, conspiracy theorist Bill Cooper incorporated Andrews’ theories into his manifesto, Behold a Pale Horse , one of the more widely read books of fringe political conspiracies. Where Hynek kept his speculations scientific, The New Republic noted that Cooper’s co-opting of ufology was “...the tip of a spear asserting that the number one thing we had to fear was not little green men, but the government that colluded with them, appropriating their technology against us.”

Hynek’s legacy risks being overshadowed by the extreme and politically charged theories of self-proclaimed ufologists that emerged in his wake. His ambition was for ufology to gain recognition as a legitimate scientific field; however, the proliferation of conspiracy theories that came after him provided the government with further justification to dismiss the subject entirely.

The new AARO report states that during the time Hynek was working with Project Blue Book, “about 75 percent of Americans trusted the [US government] ‘to do the right thing almost always or most of the time.’” But, the report notes, since 2007, that number has never risen above 30 percent. “This lack of trust probably has contributed to the belief held by some subset of the U.S. population that the USG has not been truthful regarding knowledge of extraterrestrial craft.”

Ultimately, the Air Force’s efforts to stifle Hynek—pressuring him to offer the public standard responses to questions he wasn’t even allowed to ask—appears to have backfired.

Ironically, the Air Force’s attempts to quiet suspicions only fueled them, leading to more conspiracy theories and distrust. People came to believe that the government was hiding the truth, contrary to Hynek’s actual revelation: that, in reality, the people at the top may not care much about finding the answers after all.

Michael Natale is the news editor for Best Products , covering a wide range of topics like gifting, lifestyle, pop culture, and more. He has covered pop culture and commerce professionally for over a decade. His past journalistic writing can be found on sites such as Yahoo! and Comic Book Resources , his podcast appearances can be found wherever you get your podcasts, and his fiction can’t be found anywhere, because it’s not particularly good. 

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J. Allen Hynek

(1910-1986)

Who Was J. Allen Hynek?

J. Allen Hynek studied astronomy at the University of Chicago before joining the faculty at Ohio State University. In the late 1940s, he analyzed reports of unidentified aircraft sightings as a consultant to the U.S. Air Force's "Project Sign." The following decade, he began conducting more thorough investigations under the umbrella of the renamed "Project Blue Book," with his discoveries fueling a quest to turn the study of UFOs into a legitimate scientific practice. Hynek later founded the Center for UFO Studies and published multiple books on the subject. One of them introduced the "Close Encounter" classification of sightings, inspiring the Steven Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind .

Josef Allen Hynek was born in Chicago, Illinois, on May 1, 1910. His dad, Joseph, an immigrant from Czechoslovakia, was a cigar manufacturer and his mom, Bertha, was a grammar school teacher.

An introduction to the stars came after Hynek was bedridden with scarlet fever at age seven: Having run through their supply of children's books to read, his mom turned to textbooks, with a high school edition on astronomy capturing the boy's attention.

Hynek excelled in math and became editor of his school paper in high school. By then he had also developed an interest in more esoteric subjects, particularly the works of the Rosicrucian secret societies and hermetic philosopher Rudolf Steiner.

After earning his bachelor of science from the University of Chicago in 1931, Hynek remained at the school to pursue a doctorate in astronomy. His graduate studies took him to the Yerkes Observatory at Wisconsin's Lake Geneva, where, he recalled, his focus on the cosmos left him largely in the dark about events like the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany.

Instead, it was an interstellar event that impacted his career: With the appearance of the brilliant Nova Herculis in the night sky in late 1934, Hynek was tapped to take readings of the supernova at Ohio's Perkins Observatory, which was affiliated with Ohio State University. After earning his Ph.D., he joined Ohio State's Department of Physics and Astronomy in 1936.

Project Sign and Project Blue Book

In 1948 astronomer Hynek, then director of Ohio State University’s McMillin Observatory, agreed to help the U.S. Air Force investigate reports of unexplained aircraft sightings, including one that described the lightning-fast "flying saucers" above the Cascade Mountains in Washington.

As the astronomical consultant on "Project Sign," Hynek combed through the reports and sorted them into categories: There were those which were simply astronomical observations, like the appearance of a meteor, those explained by meteorology, like an unusually shaped cloud, and those which captured accounts of man-made objects, like balloons. That left about 20 percent with no clear explanation, though Hynek felt that answers would eventually surface and returned to Ohio State.

By 1952, with reports continuing to trickle in, the Air Force had rekindled the operation as "Project Blue Book." Hynek was also back in the fold and now granted the license to investigate the alleged sightings in the field. While he had harbored plenty of skepticism the first time around, he found his assumptions challenged by the rational recollections of witnesses, and began thinking about the legitimate scientific study of these "Unidentified Flying Objects" or "UFOs."

By the 1960s, Hynek had moved on as the chair of the Department of Astronomy at Northwestern University and was at odds with the stifling oversight of the Air Force. With the arrival of new intriguing cases, like a reported sighting of alien beings by New Mexico police officer Lonnie Zamora in 1964, Hynek began conferring with other curious Northwestern faculty members in what he called his "invisible college."

Swamp Gas and the Condon Committee

In March 1966, Hynek was dispatched to investigate reports of unusual lights in separate areas of Michigan over successive nights. Rushed to conduct his findings amid a horde of reporters, the scientist soon announced that the sightings were possibly the result of "swamp gas."

The term became a national joke, but Michigan Congressman and House Minority Leader Gerald Ford wasn't laughing and demanded the Armed Services Committee pick up what he felt was a shoddy investigation. Called to testify, Hynek used the occasion to argue for an extensive, transparent study of UFOs, marking his first public break from the Air Force.

With the formation later that year of the University of Colorado's "Condon Committee," named for director and physicist Edward Condon, Hynek was thrilled that UFO research had finally risen to a level of national importance. However, he was disappointed when the committee concluded two years of study with the report that there was no need to expend further resources on the subject. In 1969, Project Blue Book was formally shuttered for good.

Center for UFO Studies

No longer hamstrung by the Air Force, Hynek in 1973 formed the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) to further legitimize the field of "ufology." CUFOS enjoyed some successes in its early years, leading investigations of reported sightings while fostering working relationships with law-enforcement agencies.

Hynek left Northwestern in 1978 to devote his full attention to CUFOS. By the early 1980s, fundraising efforts were flailing and Hynek was forced to run the operation out of his home in Evanston, Illinois. He was lured to Scottsdale, Arizona, by a potential benefactor in 1984, though the promise of a revived operation failed to materialize.

CUFOS remains in existence, run by a devoted board of disciples who retain access to Hynek's files and continue to aid investigations of UFOs and other unexplained phenomena.

'The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry' and 'Close Encounters'

In 1972, Hynek sought to lay out a clear explanation of his studies by publishing The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry . The book is most famous for introducing the "Close Encounter" classification: A Close Encounter of the First Kind entails the spotting of an unidentified aircraft; the Second Kind includes accompanying physical effects, like the sudden malfunctioning of equipment; and the Third Kind includes the sighting of life forms on or near the aircraft.

Other Media Appearances and Books

In the 1970s, Hynek was a well-known face of ufology thanks to appearances on programs like The Dick Cavett Show and In Search Of.... He was a popular and well-compensated speaker on the college circuit and even delivered a presentation on UFOs to the United Nations in 1978.

Hynek also continued his written analysis of the subject with The Edge of Reality: A Progress Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (1975), co-authored with colleague Jacques Vallee. The following year, he offered the inside scoop of his involvement with Project Blue Book with The Hynek UFO Report: What the Government Suppressed and Why .

Other Professional Contributions

Proximity fuze.

During World War II, Hynek helped develop military technology at the Johns Hopkins Applied Science Laboratory. His pet project was the proximity fuze, a detonator that used radio signals to determine when an explosive device was close enough to its target. Hynek's work here paved the way for his involvement with UFO investigations and other government projects.

Project Moonwatch and Sputnik

In 1956, Hynek was recruited by the Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory to aid efforts to launch the first man-made satellite into orbit. As part of what was dubbed "Operation Moonwatch," Hynek began establishing a global network of tracking stations outfitted with specialized optical instruments.

The plans were thrown into disarray when the Soviet Union suddenly launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1, on October 4, 1957. The event brought the first taste of media attention for Hynek, who found himself as the point man for interviews to explain what was happening and why Americans weren't in danger.

Hynek eventually resumed his work, along the way pioneering a method for capturing light from faint galaxies that became the foundation of image orthicon astronomy, before resuming his teaching career in 1960.

Project Stargazer

By the late 1950s, Hynek was again collaborating with the Air Force for what became "Project Stargazer": An attempt to overcome atmospheric distortions by launching high-altitude balloons equipped with telescopes. To Hynek's frustration, the Air Force scrapped the project in 1963 following a series of failed tests.

Marriages and Family

Following a first marriage that ended in 1939, Hynek in 1942 wed an undergraduate student named Miriam Curtis. They had five children: Scott, Joel, Paul, Ross, and Roxane.

Hynek died of a brain tumor at Memorial Hospital in Scottsdale, Arizona, on April 27, 1986, at age 75.

QUICK FACTS

• Name: J. Allen Hynek
• Birth Year: 1910
• Birth date: May 1, 1910
• Birth State: Illinois
• Birth City: Chicago
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: American astronomer J. Allen Hynek is best known for investigations of unidentified flying objects and efforts to promote "ufology" as a legitimate scientific pursuit.
• Astrological Sign: Taurus
• Interesting Facts
• J. Allen Hynek was born just before Halley's Comet passed close to Earth in 1910, and died shortly after the comet made a return appearance in 1986.
• Death Year: 1986
• Death date: April 27, 1986
• Death State: Arizona
• Death City: Scottsdale
• Death Country: United States

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: J. Allen Hynek Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/scientists/j-allen-hynek
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: January 22, 2020
• Original Published Date: January 4, 2019
• Scientists in the year 2066 may think us very naive in our denials.
• Ridicule is not part of the scientific method, and the American public should not be taught that it is.
• For me, the challenge was to find out the very limitations of science, the places where it broke down, the phenomena it didn't explain.

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