National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena

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National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena
(NICAP)
Type Non-profit organization
Founded October 24, 1956
Dissolved 1980
Headquarters Washington, DC
Website nicap.org

The National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (or NICAP) was a civilian unidentified flying object research group active in the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Contents

[edit] Overview

Though NICAP was a non-profit organization, the group faced collapse many times in its existence, due in no small part to financial ineptitude among the group’s directors. Only for a few years in the 1960’s when the organization's membership spiked dramatically was NICAP on firm financial ground.

Despite these internal troubles, NICAP probably had the most visibility of any civilian American UFO group, and arguably had the most mainstream respectability; Jerome Clark writes that "for many middle-class Americans and others interested in UFOs but repelled by ufology’s fringe aspects, it served as a sober forum for UFO reporting, inquiry, investigation, and speculation" (Clark, 412). NICAP advocated transparent scientific investigation of UFO sightings and was skeptical of "contactee" tales involving meetings with space visitors, the alien abduction phenomenon, and the like. The presence of several prominent military officials as members of NICAP brought a further measure of respectability for many observers.

Throughout its existence, NICAP argued that there was an organized governmental cover up of UFO evidence. NICAP also pushed for governmental hearings regarding UFOs, to at best limited and occasional success.

Though any UFO-related group attracts a number of uncritical enthusiasts along with a small percentage of cranks, astronomer J. Allen Hynek cited NICAP and APRO as the two best civilian UFO groups of their time, comprised largely of sober, serious minded people capable of valuable contributions to the subject (Hynek, 1972).

Until the mid-1960s NICAP gave little attention to close encounters of the third kind (where animated beings are purportedly sighted in relation to a UFO). However, longtime NICAP member Richard H. Hall related privately that this position was "tactical and not doctrinaire." (Druffel, 93). In other words, NICAP did not necessarily dismiss occupant reports out of hand, but elected to focus on other aspects of the UFO phenomenon which would be perceived by mainstream observers as less outlandish. The attention given to the contactees of the 1950s (who typically claimed ongoing contact with benevolent "Space Brothers") was almost certainly a factor in NICAP’s reluctance to study UFO occupant reports too closely. But with the 1964 Lonnie Zamora UFO encounter — regarded by researchers as one of the most reliable UFO occupant reports — NICAP loosened its restrictions on studying UFO occupant reports.

[edit] History

[edit] 1950s

NICAP was founded on October 24, 1956, by physicist Thomas Townsend Brown. On the Board of Directors were several prominent persons, including retired United States Marine Corps officer Donald Keyhoe and retired United States Navy Rear Admiral Delmer S. Fahrney, who had headed the Navy’s guided missile program.

By early January, 1957, however, Brown had proved so financially inept that the Board of Directors asked him to step down. Fahrney replaced him, then convened a press conference on January 16, 1957 where he announced that UFOs were under intelligent control, but that they were of neither American or Soviet origin. The press conference received major attention, doubtless aided by Fahrney’s stature.

In April, 1957 Fahrney resigned from NICAP, citing unspecified pressing personal issues. It was later disclosed that his wife was seriously ill, but also that Fahney was bothered by the whispers and ridicule his UFO interests generated among many of his peers in the military.

Keyhoe became NICAP’s director. He established a monthly newsletter,The U.F.O. Investigator. Also in 1957, another prominent figure came onboard: Vice Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter joined NICAP’s board of directors; he had earlier been the head of the Central Intelligence Agency.

The organization had chapters and local associates scattered throughout the United States. Many of their members were amateurs, but a considerable percentage were professionals, including journalists, military personnel, scientists and medical doctors. One of NICAP’s prime goals was thorough field investigations of UFO reports. They would eventually compile a significant number of case files and field investigations which Clark characterises as "often first rate". (Clark, 413)

By 1958, NICAP had grown to over 5000 members. Keyhoe’s financial skills were only slightly better than Brown’s, and NICAP hobbled along for several more years, facing collapse on several occasions. For most of his tenure as director, Keyhoe sent irregular letters to NICAP's members, warning of the organization's imminent collapse, and soliciting funds to keep NICAP from collapse. According to Jerome Clark (see sources below), Keyhoe often paid for much of NICAP's operating expenses himself.

[edit] 1960s

The 1960s found much of the North American public keenly interested in UFOs, and NICAP’s membership crested at 14,000. This influx of members greatly improved the group’s finances.

When the the U.S. Air Force, in collaboration with the University of Colorado, established the Condon Committee (1966-68) to study UFOs, NICAP initially aided its investigations, but Keyhoe quickly became disenchanted, limiting NICAP's role. NICAP formally severed ties with the Condon Committee in early 1968. Following the Condon Committee’s report (which concluded there was nothing extraordinary about UFOs), public interest in the subject abated, and NICAP’s membership dropped to about 5000.

1969 saw the last NICAP efforts of any significance, two monographs: Strange Effects from UFOs and UFOs: A New Look.

NICAP's membership plummeted in the late 1960s, and Keyhoe faced charges of financial incompetence and authoritarianism. By 1969 Keyhoe turned his focus away from the military and focused on the CIA as the source of the UFO cover up. By December, 1969, NICAP's board, headed by Colonel Joseph Bryan III, forced Keyhoe to retire as NICAP chief. Bryan was actually a former covert CIA agent who had served as founder and head of the CIA's psychological warfare division. Under Bryan's leadership, NICAP disbanded its local and state affiliate groups (Denzler, p. 17). Afterwards, John L. Acuff became NICAP’s director.

[edit] 1970s

NICAP’s membership continued to drop as it was led by Acuff and then Alan Hall. By now the organization was all but paralyzed by infighting, including unsubstantiated charges that the Central Intelligence Agency had infiltrated NICAP. In fact, several persons with CIA ties had joined NICAP; however, their motives and reasons for joining NICAP have been the subject of some debate.

One person specifically named as a suspected CIA infiltrator was retired Air Force Colonel Joseph Bryan III. His son, writer C.D.B. Bryan, dismisses this idea, suggesting that "Anyone who knows anything about the history of NICAP knows that the group didn’t need anybody's help in its disintegration; it simply self destructed." As to his father’s involvement as an alleged CIA agitator, Bryan writes, "my father’s unswerving, outspoken faith in UFOs ... was, I felt, something of an embarrassment ... I do not believe it was the sort of public position an agent would take whose covert goal was to smother interest in UFOs." (Bryan, 191fn)

1980 saw the last publication of NICAP’s newsletter; the organization dissolved later that year. NICAP's archive of UFO sighting case files was subsequently purchased by the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS).

[edit] References in popular culture

[edit] Sources

  • C.D.B. Bryan, Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: Alien Abduction, UFOs and the Conference at M.I.T. Alfred A. Knopf, 1995; ISBN 0-679-42975-1
  • Jerome Clark, The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial. Visible Ink, 1998; ISBN 1-57859-029-9
  • Brenda Denzler, The Lure of the Edge: Scientific Passions, Religious Beliefs, and the Pursuit of UFOs. University of California Press, 2003; ISBN 0-520-23905-9
  • Hynek, J. Allen, The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, Chicago: Henry Regenery Co., 1972

[edit] External links

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