hillenkoetter-1960-worcester-gazette

“Ex-C.I.A. Chief Wants UFO Probe” — Bulkley Griffin, June 1, 1960

Source: Worcester (Mass.) Evening Gazette, page 22, June 1, 1960. Distributed nationally by the Evening Gazette Washington Bureau. Author: Bulkley Griffin, Chief of Evening Gazette Washington Bureau Archived in CIA Reading Room as CIA-RDP68-00046R000200090025-2 (declassified/sanitized copy approved for release 2014/06/12). Original URL: https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP68-00046R000200090025-2.pdf (redirects to root; retrieved via Wayback Machine 2024 capture) Sourced: 2026-05-17 via Wayback + OCR (CIA reading room redirected; document is a scanned newspaper clipping).

This is the article cited by u/Better-Waltz-2026’s r/UFOs post as “Hillenkoetter broke his silence in the New York Times in 1960.” Important provenance correction: the article is in the Worcester (Mass.) Evening Gazette, not the New York Times. It was syndicated via the Evening Gazette’s Washington bureau and may have appeared in other papers, but the archived primary copy is the Worcester one. The CIA preserved the Worcester Gazette page in its reading-room file because the article concerns CIA equities (Hillenkoetter was the first DCI). The “NYT” claim in the Reddit thread does not appear correct from the CIA-archived copy.

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Full text

EX-C.I.A. CHIEF WANTS UFO PROBE

By BULKLEY GRIFFIN Chief of Evening Gazette Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON, June 1, 1960

WASHINGTON — Adm. R. H. Hillenkoetter, who headed the Central Intelligence Agency from May 1947 to October 1950, recently declared, speaking about the so-called flying saucers: “The unknown objects are operating under intelligent control. It is imperative that we learn where the UFO’s (unidentified flying objects) come from and what their purpose is.”

Then, referring to the years of World War II and the years immediately following, he said: “I know that neither Russia nor this country had anything even approaching such high speeds and maneuvers.”

Here Admiral Hillenkoetter, who is a member of the board of governors of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), has gone further than he did in a statement last February. At that time he said: “It is time for the truth to be brought out in open Congressional hearings. Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.”

But to come to the U-2 matter. Here was a case where we lied by prearrangement, lied by plan. In the light of the Air Force handling of the UFO matter, insisting against plain evidence to the contrary in certain cases that the UFOs can all be explained as familiar objects mistakenly identified, the question inevitably arises: Is the Air Force following a prearranged plan of public statements on the strange objects? Is the Air Force deliberately misleading the public?

Regarding our early lying about the captured U-2 plane and its pilot, our statement that the plane was an innocent weather plane, George V. Allen, director of the U.S. Information Agency, said that this statement was a “push-button” reply, which he stated, had been prepared in advance. Sec. of State Christian A. Herter said our statement was “a cover story” that “was prepared for that contingency.” And Undersecretary of State Dillon repeated we used a “cover story” which “had been previously prepared for such instance.”

An all-important revelation for our citizens, from the U-2 case, is that it is high official policy to lie to our citizens and to the world, in some cases.

Do the UFO sightings constitute such a case? Let it be said parenthetically that the majority of sightings obviously involve mistaken identity. But a small minority do not; these present evidence that the Air Force explanations are not true.

Admiral Hillenkoetter, with all his special knowledge, says this indirectly, if you will. No need to stress that when Admiral Hillenkoetter states the UFO’s are intelligently controlled and were neither our invention nor Russian inventions, he speaks with a knowledge possessed by few other citizens. Whether a former director of the CIA knows what he is talking about is a question that answers itself.

Hillenkoetter undoubtedly received reports on the UFOs, including the findings of investigations concerning them. Dulles [Allen Dulles, then CIA Director] without question has received reports and findings on the UFOs.

By the way, in the early 1950s the CIA rather openly helped arrange a Pentagon meeting of top scientists on the strange objects. That conference issued conclusions which, among other things, said the UFOs pose no apparent threat to national security and recommended that the public be told more about them. This recommendation immediately died.

Former CIA Director Hillenkoetter does not believe the Air Force is telling our citizens the truth about the unidentified flying objects. He would have a Congressional investigation.

Up to now, Congressional committees have shied away from such a probe. The Air Force has been successful in its “official secrecy and ridicule” to the point where many members of Congress apparently fear that to take the UFOs seriously would be to invite the “ridicule” of which the Admiral speaks.

To hide the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel through the issuance of a regulation. This regulation, AF 200-2, prohibits the release of any information on UFO sightings that are not explained as familiar objects.

It is time for the truth to be brought out in open Congressional hearings. The dangers from secrecy about unidentified flying objects are real, and the public has a right to know the findings of its government on this critical subject.

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Notes on what this primary document shows

What is well-established by the document itself:

• Hillenkoetter was a real first DCI (May 1947 – October 1950) — he was in the chair during Roswell (June-July 1947), the Twining memo (September 1947), Project Sign (December 1947), Project Grudge (February 1949), and the early years of Project Blue Book’s predecessors.
• By June 1960 he was on the NICAP board of governors. NICAP was the largest civilian UFO research organization of the 1950s-1960s; Donald Keyhoe directed it.
• Hillenkoetter is on the record (per the article’s quoted statements):
  1. UFOs operate “under intelligent control”
  2. Neither US nor USSR had the speeds/maneuvers attributed to them in WWII-and-immediate-postwar period
  3. Air Force has used “official secrecy and ridicule” to keep the public misinformed
  4. He wants “open Congressional hearings”
  5. He references USAF Regulation AF 200-2 silencing personnel
• The article frames the U-2 incident (Powers shot down May 1, 1960) as immediate context: the U-2 cover story (announced “weather plane”) was demonstrably a prepared lie, told by the same government that also denies UFO significance. Griffin’s argument is: if the government lied openly about the U-2 even after the lie was caught, the public should reconsider Air Force denials about UFOs.

What the document does not establish:

• It does not establish that UFOs are extraterrestrial. Hillenkoetter says they are “intelligently controlled” and not US or USSR origin, but stops short of attributing to non-human intelligence.
• The article is one Washington-bureau columnist’s (Griffin’s) framing of Hillenkoetter’s statements. Hillenkoetter himself did not publish a NYT op-ed in 1960; the more direct primary documents are his February 1960 NICAP statement and his subsequent letters to NICAP and to Congressmembers. The Reddit-thread framing of “first CIA Director broke silence in the New York Times” is loose with the provenance.

Why it is still significant:

• A first DCI publicly endorsing the view that UFOs are real, intelligently controlled, not American or Soviet, and that Congress should hold hearings, is high-credibility-tier on the question “do credentialed insiders take UFOs seriously.”
• Hillenkoetter is a single example, but in the credibility-framework hierarchy he is the gold-standard 1960-era predecessor of subsequent insiders (Goldwater, Mitchell, Reid, Wilson, Mellon, Elizondo, Grusch). The pattern of credentialed-insider-publicly-frustrated-with-USG-secrecy goes back unbroken to him.
• AF 200-2 (Air Force Regulation 200-2, August 1954, “Unidentified Flying Objects Reporting”) is a real, citable regulation that did require Air Force personnel to send UFO reports up the chain and prohibited public release of unexplained cases. The article’s reference to it is factually accurate.

What this fits

This is the earliest documented instance of the recurring credentialed-insider-publicly-demands-disclosure pattern. The pattern runs:

1. 1960: Hillenkoetter (first DCI) — this article + NICAP board position + Feb 1960 statement
2. 1968: McDonald, Hynek (1968 House Symposium)
3. 1970s: Goldwater (Air Force Reserve major general, Senator, Presidential candidate) — LeMay “Blue Room” episode
4. 1993-96: Rockefeller Initiative (Greer briefing CIA Director Woolsey; Hubbell memoir)
5. 2001: Greer / Disclosure Project NPC event
6. 2010: Salas/Hastings nuclear-officer NPC event
7. 2013: Citizens Hearing on Disclosure (Edgar Mitchell, Nick Pope)
8. 2017: NYT/AATIP (Elizondo, Mellon, Reid)
9. 2023: Grusch House Oversight testimony

Each iteration produces a credentialed insider going public, requesting congressional action, and getting variable responses. Hillenkoetter is the founding example.