Australian nuclear physicist who worked on UFO matters for the Joint Intelligence Bureau and the Directorate of Air Force Intelligence, and the most substantial Australian figure in the official record.
The paper
Turner argued, in a paper now in the declassified National Archives files, that the American policy of public ridicule was deliberate rather than a by-product: designed to allay public alarm and to protect classified programmes from the attention that serious official interest would attract. He pressed for a scientific investigation on the Australian side and was shut down.
Why the argument is worth separating from the conclusion
The ridicule thesis is normally asserted rather than argued, and normally by people outside the system. Turner made it from inside an intelligence organisation, in writing, at the time, with access to the Australian traffic on North West Cape and the rest. That does not make it correct, and a policy of not encouraging reports is not the same as a policy of manufacturing contempt. It does make it the best-sourced version of the claim, which is why Ross Coulthart leans on it in In Plain Sight.
Connections
In Plain Sight · Ross Coulthart · North West Cape · Pine Gap · Westall 1966 · Triple Coverup · Exmouth Incident 1991