January 30, 2010 marks the 40th anniversary of the closing of the only official investigation of UFO reports ever conducted by the United States government - Project Blue Book. While most UFO reports analyzed by the Air Force during this 22-year project were identified as conventional aircraft, weather balloons, meteors and other known phenomena, several hundred reports described objects whose appearance and maneuvers could not be explained as anything known to science.

 A great number of these "unknowns" were reported by Air Force pilots, radar operators and other highly trained military personnel, and a disturbing number of reports occurred in the immediate vicinity of sensitive United States military facilities.

 Thousands of military, commercial and private pilots have made reports - in complete seriousness and concern - of unknown craft flying and maneuvering dangerously close to their own aircraft. Richard Haines - formerly a senior research scientist with NASA-Ames Research Center - notes in his 2000 paper "Aviation Safety in America: A Previously Neglected Factor" that UFOs "can pose a hazard to aviation safety and should be dealt with appropriately and without bias."

 For what appear to be national security reasons, the Air Force has continually downplayed the reality and importance of the UFO issue in public for more than 60 years while declassified documents released under the Freedom of Information Act have shown that - behind the scenes - officials have consistently treated the matter with the utmost seriousness. 

 Four decades after Project Blue Book was discontinued in January 1970, reports of unexplainable aerial phenomena - apparently under intelligent control - continue to be made across the nation and indeed around the globe. Although civilian reporting centers continue to amass sighting reports from the public, these groups have neither the resources nor the expertise to adequately investigate the UFO phenomenon.

 When unknown aircraft, whatever their origin, are able to penetrate our sensitive military installations with impunity and put commercial airline pilots in fear of imminent mid-air collision, our government - despite popular misconceptions regarding UFOs - is obliged to look into this matter in a serious way.

 We, the undersigned, call on the Congress of the United States of America to designate a subcommittee to hold open and public hearings to evaluate the evidence for the reality of UFOs and to consider the establishment of a new official investigation into the nature of this unexplained phenomenon.

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