Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio: CIA team collects withheld ATIC files before Robertson Panel
On December 12, 1952, a three-man CIA team of H. P. Robertson, Assistant Director H. Marshall Chadwell and consultant Frederick C. Durant went to ATIC at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, to obtain case reports withheld from the upcoming Robertson Panel; Battelle Memorial Institute asked for a postponement, which CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith later overruled.
Background
On December 12, 1952, the CIA, having learned that ATIC was withholding significant case reports from the upcoming Robertson Panel, sent a three-man team to Wright-Patterson AFB to obtain the relevant documents. The team consisted of Robertson himself, CIA Assistant Director H. Marshall Chadwell and CIA rocket consultant Frederick C. Durant, a personal friend of Edward J. Ruppelt who urged him to comply. At ATIC they met personnel from Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio, which had been studying the UFO data in great secrecy; Battelle asked the CIA to postpone the panel until March so the study could be finished. Robertson agreed to postpone, but was later overruled by CIA Director Gen. Walter Bedell Smith. The entry cites Chadwell's memorandum of December 13, 1952, the CUFON 1952 CIA document sampler, NICAP's 1952 wave chronology, the Sign Historical Group workshop proceedings and Jerome Clark's encyclopedia. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.