Internal memorandum written on 9 August 1966 by Robert J. Low, an assistant dean at the University of Colorado, to two university officers, weighing whether the institution should accept the Air Force contract that became the Condon Report.
What it says
Its load-bearing sentence proposes that the project be described so that to the public it would appear a totally objective study, while to the scientific community it would present the image of a group of non-believers trying their best to be objective but having an almost zero expectation of finding a saucer. Low went on to be the project’s coordinator.
Why it mattered
The memo was found in the project’s files and leaked in 1968, before the report was published; two staff members were dismissed over the leak, and it ran in the popular press. It did not change the report’s conclusions and it has never been shown to have determined them. What it does establish is that the framing was contemplated in writing before the work started, which is why it is cited in every subsequent argument about whether the Condon Report was a study or a disposal.
Connections
Condon Report · Project Blue Book · J. Allen Hynek · Triple Coverup