Ford's 1966 Call for UFO Hearings
On March 25, 1966, Ford used the congressional record to press a question that federal agencies had preferred to leave in the realm of rumor: whether the United States government owed the public a formal accounting of unidentified flying objects. The statement, preserved in Box D37 of the Ford Congressional Papers at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, called for a congressional investigation into UFO sightings reported in Southern Michigan and other parts of the country.
Ford's argument rested on two pillars. First, he noted that public alarm had grown serious enough that citizens deserved a responsible forum in which their reports could be examined rather than dismissed. S.
Air Force investigators had been checking UFO reports for years but had come up with nothing very conclusive — a finding that, in Ford's reading, argued for more scrutiny rather than less. What makes the document historically significant is not any…