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The most time on the study is Bob Lowe, assistant dean of the Graduate School and UFO project

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coordinator.

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His office is the center of project activities.

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Lowe has two secretaries.

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He also has a small library on UFOs, a modest selection of pictures and a mounting pile

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of correspondence.

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I asked if any large problems have come up in the project.

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Well, the whole problem is a big puzzle.

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I don't think one can say that eight big problems come up, but we certainly have a difficult

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problem to pursue.

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It's hard to know how to go about studying this thing.

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How would you do it if somebody suddenly handed you the job?

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You investigate unidentified flying objects, how do you go about doing that?

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That's the problem that we've had and we've been wrestling whether it's a tough one, but

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I think we're making some headway.

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The overall director of the project is Dr. Edward Condon, one of the most experienced

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and distinguished scientists in the United States or anywhere else.

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He's a physicist and a former director of the National Bureau of Standards in Washington,

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D.C.

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Condon is one of the main reasons the Air Force chose the University of Colorado for

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the UFO project.

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At the top of impressive Gila Tower on the CU campus, I talked with Dr. Condon and asked

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if he knows how the UFO study will now proceed.

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Well, we're just getting started.

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I must say that the last two and a half months or so that we've been looking into this indicate

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that the total situation is much more complicated than we appreciated at first, so that while

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we have some notions of what we're going to do, I don't have any feeling at all of a very

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orderly or well organized thing at this date.

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One of the most difficult things is that all of the phenomena are of such short duration

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and the reports have a way of coming in after the thing is all over so that it looks almost

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hopeless to plan on getting much in the way of being able to hop in a car and dash out

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or hop in a jet plane and dash out and get there yourself and see it before it's all

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over because most people that see things only report after they've seen it and it's

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gone away and then they come in and use the telephone so it's too late.

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So that's a great difficulty.

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I don't mean to give up on that.

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The important thing would be to try to do that and get some pictures, better pictures

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and pictures of which we were sure of the reliability simply because our own people

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have taken them.

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We would like to get some spectroscopic observations, but that too is difficult.

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One of the things that's common to many of the reports, I don't mean statistically,

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but in a good many of the common categories, people complain about ignition failures on

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their cars and we're negotiating with some of the principal ignition engineers in Detroit

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to make a special study just on that phase of it.

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I don't like to be more specific than that because it hasn't been fully set up yet, but

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we've had indications that we can get a group together that will look into that for us.

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That is characteristic is a good many people have reported.

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Well, I'm not a medical man so I don't quite know what the proper term is, but people report

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the feelings of heat or as if they're like diatherm and heat treatment being very, very

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much overcome with a feverish feeling when something like an ufo was around when they

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were a meeting by that they saw something at the same time feelings that would go away.

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So we're going to try to get some medical people to give a special attention to those

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reports.

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Of course, we'll look into all of the other things that have been suggested like the ball

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lightning possibility and various other things.

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Quite many of the things that have been suggested it must be said must be realized are things

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that might be explanations of some of the reports, but I'm convinced there'll be no

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one single thing that accounts for all of the reports simply because they themselves are

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so so different in character.

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As the UFOs have attracted public attention nationally, so have they drawn reaction to

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the University of Colorado.

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I asked Dr. Conn and about public reaction.

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Oh, it's been very good.

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We've had a very large amount of mail.

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By that I would guess between seven or eight hundred to a thousand letters along in there.

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Great many of them are from people that would like to have jobs and I suppose I ought to

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say that there's not nearly as many jobs on this as people seem to think.

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Secondly, a lot of people have written in to tell us about experiences they've had.

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But many university people who have in other universities across the country have written

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in to volunteer their help and I don't mean as job seekers in the sense of wanting to

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be on the payroll but wanting to know what they can do cooperatively at their places.

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So the acceptance that way is extremely good at this time.

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Our problem is just to try to make some rational sense out of this very complicated picture.

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In a complicated picture it is.

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Not only for the University of Colorado but for the Air Force, for private UFO organizations

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and for plain Mr. Citizen who just wants some answers.