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Edward U. Condon

The House Un-American Affairs Committee began an investigation in October 1948 of Dr. Edward U. Condon, Director of the Bureau of Standards and the first American labeled by the committee as an “atom spy". The frustration in 1949 of the concession of China to the Communists, the Soviet atom bomb, and the Alger Hiss case, expressed itself in a sweeping tide of anti-communism. Liberties that had been taken for granted were in danger of being lost. Loyalty investigations in the Government increased in intensity. The names of innocent men were being tainted and the services of "invaluable specialists" were being lost to the Government.

On February 9, 1950, a little-known Republican senator from Wisconsin made a speech alleging that some large number of Communists infested the State Department. In succeeding days he polished his speech, and the number of alleged Communists settled down to fifty-seven. He wired President Truman to do something about the situation in the State Department and the press began to pay attention. Joseph McCarthy was becoming a national figure.

Edward Uhier Condon was born March 2, 1902, in Alamogordo, New Mexico, where forty-three years later the first nuclear explosion would take place. His family was mobile, and he went to various grammar schools throughout the West. He later recalled that on November 9, 1919, he was "the only reporter from a conservative newspaper to cover the organization meeting of the Communist Labor Party of California, as it was called then. I wrote lurid and sensational stories about this small group of one or two hundred persons, which resulted in indictments against them, and which required that I had to testify against them, in trial after trial, over the next several years. In this connection I became aware of open boasting by a police detective of his having framed some of the defendants in a matter where I knew the facts to be otherwise."

In the summer of 1941, he was appointed a member of the highly secret S-i Committee under Lyman J. Briggs. This was the committee established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt upon receipt of the famous Einstein letter, and led to the eventual formation of the Manhattan Project. n April and May 1943, he served for a short time as associate director of the newly established Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. While there he wrote a manual from the notes that he took during a series of five lectures given by Robert Serber. Called The Los Alamos Primer, the report was so secret that, after Condon left Los Alamos, he did not see a copy of it until it was declassified.

When Edward Uhler Condon joined the Bureau as its director on November 7, 1945, he was already a world-famous theoretical physicist and scientist-administrator, on first-name terms with all the leading figures in science. Personally, he was a gregarious, enthusiastic, friendly man who did not suffer fools gladly, was impatient with sloppy thinking, had "an ever ready and exuberant sense of humor, and a gift of repartee, but he could be wittily caustic when provoked." He was vigorous and aggressive with myriads of new ideas, and was not afraid to push them. When he came to the Bureau he found a capable institution, even though the scientific ideas of many of its leaders were rooted in the past, not the modem physics which he had helped foster. Given his background and personality, it was only natural that Condon should set about to remake the Bureau and lead it—with some kicking and screaming—into modern science.

Condon was a vigorous, driving man who was one of the scientific leaders of the world, had participated in some of the most important and secret work of the Nation during the war, and had undertaken many special assign- ments. Not a retiring man, he was an outspoken liberal and a fervent anti-isolationist. What was perhaps not as obvious, the new director was a pious man who was a Quaker by upbringing, and from his experiences was passionately against war and devoted to peace and cooperation among nations.

During 1947, five articles originating from the committee or from New Jersey Congressman J. Parnell Thomas, chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities appeared, three in the Washington Times-Herald, a newspaper "which has always had close and friendly relations with the Un-American Activities Committee and which has often been used by the committee to send up trial balloons." These articles attacked Condon and promised that he would be investigated. In June, Thomas wrote two signed articles, one in American magazine, and one in Liberty. These articles attacked Condon because of his association with the American-Soviet Science Society.

On July 22, 1947, Representative Chet Holifield he delivered a scathing denunciation, answering the attacks point by point and showing them to be false or misleading. He came to the conclusion that Condon was attacked because of his activities as advisor to the Senate Select Committee on Atomic Energy, and that those who did not want to see civilian control of atomic energy were behind the attacks.

On March 1, 1948, Representative Thomas met with Congressmen Richard B. Vail and John S. Wood, the other two members of the Subcommittee on National Security, to decide whether to release a "Report to the Full Committee." The report carried out one of the functions of the committee, and the decision was made to release it. The function promised, in ungrammatical fashion, "those groups and movements who are trying to dissipate our atomic bomb 'know-how' for the benefit of a foreign power will have the undivided attention of our committee agents, as well as those who are seeking to weaken other aspects of our national security."

Described as "preliminary," and of an investigation that was not yet complete, the report dealt with only one topic: Edward U. Condon, director of the National Bureau of Standards. In a "matter which is of such importance that it demands immediate attention," the report stated at the very beginning, "from the evidence at hand, it appears that Dr. Condon is one of the weakest links in our atomic security."

The document was filled with errors, inaccuracies, and innuendo. Eight days later, Holifield delivered a piercing evaluation of it. His analysis was complete and thorough, and his main points are summarized here. The subcommittee's report suffered from sloppy staff work and writing. In the first two paragraphs there are seven inaccuracies, mostly unimportant and one even amusing, but nevertheless indicative of the lack of care taken in the writing of the report.

For example, the maiden name of Mrs. Condon was given as Emilie Honzek rather than Honzik; Condon's position at Princeton was given as "associate director of the physics department," a nonexistent post; Condon was associate professor. The amusing one read as follows: "Condon is principally regarded as a theoretical physicist which involves radar, nuclear physics, radioactive tracers, mass spectroscopy, and the elastic properties of metals."

When giving the background of Mrs. Condon, she is gratuitously identified as "an American-born woman of Czechoslovakian descent." The reason for this remark arose at the end of the report, where the following passage occurs: "In this country they [the communists] haven't gotten as far as they have in Czechoslovakia, but they got pretty far, because they got a man [Henry Wallace] as Vice President of the United States, and he is now their candidate for President, and he is the same man who recommended Dr. Condon as Director of the Bureau of Standards." By innuendo, Mrs. Condon's ancestry served to imply that, at a minimum, the Condons were friendly toward communism.

Two questions concerning Condon's early days at the Bureau attracted the committee's attention. One was security clearance. Condon had, of course, been completely cleared for his atomic energy work at Los Alamos and Berkeley, and for all the other areas he worked in. He retained those clearances when he came to the Bureau. However, upon the formation of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), that agency set up its own clearance procedures and had not yet completed them on Condon at the time the matter was investigated by the subcommittee. Under the AEC's "need to know rules," he was still excluded from certain areas, such as atomic weapons. Hence his clearance was marked "pending," but this was no more than bureaucratic inertia.

The report stated that "The files of the Bureau [FBI] reflect that Dr. Edward U. Condon has been in contact as late as 1947 with an individual alleged by a self-confessed Soviet espionage agent to have engaged in espionage activities with the Russians in Washington, D.C., from 1941 to 1944." The report did not detail what the nature of the contact was, but this was clarified three days later when, on March 4, an enterprising reporter from the Washington Post supplied a missing sentence of the letter that, according to its chairman, the subcommittee had "inadvertently" left out. The sentence read: "There is no evidence to show that contacts between this individual and Dr. Condon were related to this individual's espionage". Holifield commented on this omission: "What does this deletion or omission mean in terms of a full and careful presentation of evidence? What is this if not deliberate character assassination, without regard to truth, justice, the democratic processes, honesty, integrity, or fair play?"

The Bureau had an established policy of exchange of scientific publications with the Soviet Union and had a mailing list of about seventy Russian institutes to which Bureau publications were routinely sent. Condon was anxious to get as much Russian scientific information as possible, but after the war the flow of such information from the Soviets had slowed down. Condon asked Dmitri I. Vinogradoff, a Russian-born American citizen to look into the matter. The Soviet Embassy explained that the slowdown was because of the destruction caused by the war; however, rumor persisted that the Soviets had adopted a policy of not sending material. Vinogradoff consulted with the State Department and, in cooperation with State, Condon wrote to the Russian institutes that "in view of the uncertainties the Bureau could no longer send our material to them." Rather than Condon increasing the flow of material to the Soviet Union, he decreased it.

Finally the report brings up the American-Soviet Science Society (ASSS). This small society, numbering about 400 members, was formed to stimulate scientific cooperation between the Soviet and American scientists. It had originally been formed as the science committee of an organization called the National Council of American-Soviet Friendship (NCASF). The latter group was formed in late 1943 when the United States and the Soviet Union were allies, and was sponsored by many distinguished Americans, among them Karl T. Compton, Albert Einstein, and Senators Elbert Thomas of Utah, Arthur Capper of Kansas, and Leverett Saltonstall of Massachusetts.

Condon was front-page news in the Nation's leading newspapers for more than a week, with the bulk of the reaction against the report and the subcommit- tee. The scientific community rose up in arms in support of Condon, who was then president of the American Physical Society.

Finally, on July 15, 1948, the AEC reached its conclusions on the Condon case: "On the basis of the voluminous record before it, the members of the Commission are fully satisfied that, in the terms of the statute [Atomic Energy Act], Dr. Condon's continued clearance for the purposes stated above "will not adversely affect the common defense and security" of the United States. The Commission considers that his continued clearance is in the best interests of the atomic energy program."

By 1949 the story had run its course and things had quieted down somewhat, but Condon still had the cloud of the report hanging over him. President Truman accepted Condon's resignation effective 30 September 1951, and the deed was done. t Condon's problems with the HUAC were major factors in his decision to leave the Bureau.

By 1951 McCarthyism was reaching its peak. Investigations for security clearances from the Department of Commerce became more stringent, and some staff members were fired. A patent attorney at the Bureau was reported to have said during the war that the Russians "were putting up a good fight." A hearing was held on his case, where Rabinow was a witness, and where, after some education of the committee by Rabinow on communism and what it was all about, the attorney was cleared. Nevertheless, the secretary of commerce immediately fired the attorney. He was devastated, but went into private practice and did quite well.

Lauriston Taylor, who was the AEC coordinator for the Bureau, and through whose office went all AEC contracts, classified papers and security matters, recalls having to fire three persons. One of them was quite a tragic case. His wife was a writer and had belonged to a book club, "and it turned out to be one of those Communist cells," Taylor remembered. He went to a sanitarium and had a recurrence of some earlier lung problems and died. His wife committed suicide.

Condon's security problems by no means disappeared upon his leaving the Bureau. In September 1952, the hearings he had long wanted were held. In six grueling hours he was questioned about all aspects of his background as it pertained to security, and particularly with his left-wing associations. The same old stories were brought up, but there were new ones as well, some dating back to his wartime days at Berkeley. It was an arduous experience. He denied — and the committee did not prove — that he was ever a Communist, had ever consciously known one, or had ever violated security matters. He was not totally believed by some members of the committee. In the committee's annual report, Condon was declared to be unqualified for any position owing to his "propensity for associating with persons disloyal or of questionable loyalty and his contempt for necessary security.

Then, on November 28, 1952, the Army-Navy Personnel Security Board tentatively denied him clearance for his work at Corning. He was given the opportunity to submit written material in support of himself, and on February 7, 1953, Condon submitted a twenty-one page document in his defense. His security clearance was denied on February 16, 1953, but he appealed and his clearance was re-instated in July 1954. Three months later, in October 1954, the Secretary of the Navy suspended the decision and his clearance was again removed. The New York Times reported that Vice President Richard M. Nixon took credit for reversing the decision.

In May 1966, after some fourteen years of fighting, his clearance was finally approved at the secret level so that he could carry out a project at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics, a scientific partnership between the Bureau and the University of Colorado. The Condon Committee was the informal name of the University of Colorado UFO Project, a group funded by the United States Air Force from 1966 to 1968 at the University of Colorado to study unidentified flying objects under the direction of physicist Edward Condon.

Condon was the scientific director of an 18-month study on “flying saucers” funded under a $325,000 USAF contract to the University of Colorado. This panel took a narrow and and somewhat unique view of UFO investigatory efforts, primarily focusing on whether or not UFO phenomena merited formal scientific research in terms of academic or USG-sponsored research and in secondary schools. The panel said their remit did not include the study of UFO phenomena as a potential risk to U.S. national security interests. Among other duties, it closely examined 59 specific case studies.

The result of its work, formally titled Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects, and known as the Condon Report, released 01 Jannuary 1969, stated that: “Our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us leads us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.” The panel cautioned against support for scientific papers on this topic and recommended that teachers should not give credit to students for reading UFO literature and materials.

The panel also investigated and studied a small number of cases of alleged physical evidence of UFO visitations—from imprints on the ground and residue allegedly left behind from UFO landings (such as a white powder and ethereal strands dubbed “angel hair”) — to metallic debris. The panel found ordinary explanations for each of these cases. Some of these cases originated in Brazil, Norway, and Washington, DC.

In July 1968, prior to the report's publication, the House Science and Astronautics Committee held a symposium on UFOs, in part because of growing concern over the biases and inadequacies of the Colorado study. Condon had been open in his disdain for UFOs, spending most of his energies on contactees rather than on the reports provided by NICAP and Project Blue Book. The Condon staff was split and factionalized, some suspecting that only a negative assessment of UFOs would be published.

After the Condon Report was criticized by some scientists — including Project BLUE BOOK’s Dr. Hynek — a panel of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) was tasked in late 1968 to examine the rigor, methodology, and conclusions of the Condon Report. The panel did not conduct its own investigation into the validity of UFO reports. The NAS review concluded that, “We are unanimous in the opinion that this has been a very credible effort to apply…techniques of science to the solution of the UFO problem.”

After examining hundreds of UFO files from the Air Force's Project Blue Book and from the civilian UFO groups National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) and Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), and investigating sightings reported during the life of the Project, the Committee produced a Final Report that said the study of UFOs was unlikely to yield major scientific discoveries. The Report's conclusions were generally welcomed by the scientific community and have been cited as a decisive factor in the generally low level of interest in UFO activity among academics since that time. According to a principal critic of the Report, it is "the most influential public document concerning the scientific status of this UFO problem. Hence, all current scientific work on the UFO problem must make reference to the Condon Report."

The chiefs of the committee Edward Condon and Robert Low were committed in their desire to establish that there was no case for the UFO. In a memo he obviously did not expect to be made public, Low stated to university officials; "... the trick would be, I think, to describe the project so that, to the public, it would appear a totally objective study but to the scientific community, would present the image of a group of nonbelievers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer."

But several of the committee staff were serious about conducting a diligent examination of the data compiled by Project Bluebook. They even consulted civilian groups NICAP and APRO and established an early warning UFO group. David Saunders, and his colleague Norman Levine were fired. The study ended in scandal and controversy. By the end of the decade, the UFO craze appeared to be fading, and it was thought that ufology might never again enjoy the popularity it once had.

The CIA used UFO sightings and rumors to deceive the Soviets during the Cold War as part of a larger psychological operation. The U.S. government recognized that mysterious and unexplained phenomena, such as UFO sightings, could be leveraged to mislead adversaries and cover up intelligence activities, especially related to advanced aircraft. The CIA and other intelligence agencies planted stories in the media and allowed public interest in UFOs to build, amplifying conspiracy theories. This misdirection was intended to clutter the Soviet intelligence apparatus with "noise," making it harder for them to discern real threats or gather actionable intelligence.

In 1988, two FBI offices received similar versions of a memo titled “Operation Majestic-12…” claiming to be highly classified government document. The memo appeared to be a briefing for newly-elected President Eisenhower on a secret committee created to exploit a recovery of an extra-terrestrial aircraft and cover-up this work from public examination. An Air Force investigation determined the document to be a fake.

Majestic-12 claimed that between January 1947 and December 1952 at least 16 crashed or downed alien craft, 65 alien bodies, and 1 live alien were recovered. An additional alien craft had exploded and nothing was recovered from that incident. Of these incidents, 13 occurred within the borders of the United States not including the craft which disintegrated in the air. An alien craft was found on February 13, 1948 on a mesa near Aztec, New Mexico. Another craft was located on March 25, 1948 in Hart Canyon near Aztec, New Mexico. It was 100 feet in diameter.

A total of 17 alien bodies were recovered from those two craft. Of even greater significance was the discovery of a large number of human body parts stored within both of these vehicles. A demon had reared its ugly head and paranoia quickly took hold of everyone then "in the know." The secret lid immediately became an Above Top Secret lid and was screwed down tight. The security blanket was even tighter than that imposed upon the Manhattan Project. A super top-secret facility was built at Groom Lake in Nevada in the midst of the weapons test range. It was code named DREAMLAND. And so forth.

The National Archives received many requests for documentation and information about "Project MJ-12." Many of the inquiries concern a memorandum from Robert Cutler to Gen. Nathan Twining, dated July 14, 1954. This particular document posed problems for a number of reasons. The document was located in Record Group 341, entry 267. The series is filed by a Top Secret register number. This document does not bear such a number. The document is filed in the folder T4-1846. There are no other documents in the folder regarding "NSC/MJ-12."

Researchers on the staff of the National Archives searched the records of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Headquarters U.S. Air Force, and other related files. No further information has been found on this subject. Inquiries to the U.S. Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council failed to produce further information. The Freedom of Information Office of the National Security Council informed the National Archives that "Top Secret Restricted Information" is a marking that did not come into use at the National Security Council until the Nixon Administration. The Eisenhower Presidential Library also confirms that this particular marking was not used during the Eisenhower Administration.

The document in question does not bear an official government letterhead or watermark. The NARA conservation specialist examined the paper and determined it was a ribbon copy prepared on "diction onionskin." The Eisenhower Library has examined a representative sample of the documents in its collection of the Cutler papers. All documents in the sample created by Mr. Cutler while he served on the NSC staff have an eagle watermark on the bond paper. The onionskin carbon copies have either an eagle watermark or no watermark at all. Most documents sent out by the NSC were prepared on White House letterhead paper. For the brief period when Mr. Cutler left the NSC, his carbon copies were prepared on "prestige onionskin."

Dr. Larry Bland, editor of The George C. Marshall Papers, discovered that one of the so-called Majestic-12 documents was a complete fraud. It contained the exact same language as a letter from Marshall to Presidential candidate Thomas Dewey regarding the Magic intercepts in 1944. The dates and names had been altered and Magic changed to Majic. More over, it was a photocopy, not an original. No original MJ-12 documents have ever surfaced.

The idea that CIA has secretly concealed its research into UFOs has been a major theme of UFO buffs since the modern UFO phenomena emerged in the late 1940s. The government kept the UFO myth alive to disguise the operations during the hottest days of the Cold War of America's most secret intelligence-gathering systems.

James T. Westwood [1939-2024] was a specialist in military science, with expertise in Soviet military, political, scientific, and economic affairs. Westwood, a former CIA expert on fake soviet documents, had created similar fakes for disinformation. In 1998 Westwood reviewed the MJ-12 documents: a sophisticated 'authentic fake,' he said, whose authors must be within the Intelligence structure. Jim's verdict was that the 'Eisenhower briefing document," cornerstone of the UFO coverup arguments, had all the earmarks of a fake, an American disinformation document meant to fool the KGB. Westwood surfaces from the Cold War like a rusty submarine emerging from past eras. Charles P. Vick of GlobalSecurity.org interviewed Westwood in 2008. Westwood told Vick about a black program going back to 1949 and the 1952-53 CIA project which found 'that the flying saucer phenomenon had inherent potential for both Soviet and US psychological warfare operations...'