The result of the hearings was a recommendation for an independent scientific investigation of the Air Force’s work on Project Blue Book. After several universities (including Harvard, MIT, and Cal Tech) declined the project, the Air Force contracted with the University of Colorado. Like the other universities, Colorado feared that the UFO project might damage its credibility. It had, however, just suffered some major budget cuts and the Air Force-funded study was worth about half a million dollars.
An internal memo from Assistant Dean Robert Low dated August 9, 1966, tries to deal with the credibility problem that the UFO review posed for the university. He points out that
in order to undertake such a project one has to approach it objectively. That is, one has to admit the possibility that such things as UFOs exist. It is not respectable to give serious consideration to such a possibility. Believers, in other words, remain outcasts. … [O]ne would have to go so far as to consider the possibility that saucers, if some of the observations are verified, behave according to a set of physical laws unknown to us. The simple act of admitting these possibilities just as possibilities puts us beyond the pale, and we would lose more in prestige in the scientific community than we could possibly gain by undertaking the investigation.
Yet, Low offers a solution:
Our study would be conducted almost exclusively by nonbelievers who, although they couldn’t possibly prove a negative result, could and probably would add an impressive body of evidence that there is no reality to the observations. 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. One way to do this would be to stress investigation, not of the physical phenomena, rather of the people who do the observing – the psychology and sociology of persons and groups who report seeing UFOs.
The review, carried out under the direction of a physics professor, Dr. Edward Condon, was released in January 1969. It sought the appearance of objectivity – indeed, it followed the suggestions outlined in Low’s memo – but came under heavy criticism nonetheless, and not least when the Low memo itself was leaked to the press.
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. Although participants in the July symposium urged continued scientific study of UFOs, Condon’s introduction to the soon-to-be released Colorado report presents itself as the final authoritative word on the matter of UFOs: “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.” Of the ninety-one cases covered in the report, thirty remain unexplained.
– Aliens in America (1998), pp.37-8