Menzel Through Contemporary Eyes

As we go into a week where once more Congress will hear about UFO's, this time termed UAP's, It might be good to review one of the foremost debunkers of the subject. While much has been written about the scientist Dr. Donald H. Menzel - there has always been a bit of mystery about what role he actually played, who he worked for, and what the end game was to debunk. Later claims of spy planes and covert operations explain some but there is a time line that reveals involvement long before and after those days. So who was he? Through the pages of two major early UFO publications a different view of the noted astronomer, Dr. Donald Menzel, Harvard, emerges.

In 1954, the same year Menzel will publish his first UFO book, The newsletter of the Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects (CRIFO), written by Leonard H. Stringfield, will have this to say about the esteemed scientist:

Under the heading "Ellipsoids...Their Evidence and the Experts"  (C.R.I.F.O. :Newsletter. April 7, 1954, Vol. No. 1 pg.3):  "Another expert , Dr. Menzel, famous for his "temperature inversion" theory, called the object an illusion." 

This is also the year that several covert agencies are restructured and an emphasis to place a satellite into orbit emerge. 

In 1963, about the same year Menzel's second book, as an esteemed Harvard astronomer, with Mrs. Lyle G. Boyd (parttime science and science-fiction writer), appeared, a review appeared in the UFO Investigator, the NICAP newsletter (June-September 1963, pg. 6) had something to say. The work purported to be a scientific exploration of the topic and provide explanations. "...we regret that Dr. Menzel's hatred of NICAP and its director have led him into this attack on ALL UFO witnesses and those who believe the evidence. It should be noted that Doubleday had to delay publication while Dr. Menzel deleted numerous erroneous quotations attributed to NICAP's Director . (Galley showing the misstatements available for inspection at NICAP office). In attempting to show that ALL UFO witnesses are incompetent, misled, or are frauds, and all who believe the evidence  are mentally deranged, cultists, or childishly gullible, Dr. Menzel has staked his professional reputation. It is an incredible gamble and his ego is bound to suffer severe damage when the truth comes out." 

The article concluded with a quote attributed to Gen. L.M. Chassin, then General Air Defense Coordinator, NATO. A skeptic, said the General, was:

"Obsessed with the notion of his own omniscience, it enrages him go be confronted by phenomena that do not agree with his conviction. Finding in his limited armory of no explanation that satisfies him, he chooses to doubt anyone rather than himself, and rejects the most obvious facts in order to avoid putting his faith to the test. The mistaken pride and anthropocentrism that supposedly went out with Copernicus and Galileo make him a peril to science, as history abundantly proves." 

This statement, to the editors of the newsletter cited, "seems to describe accurately Dr. Menzel's unfortunate thinking." 

Add to this a striking, intelligent and well written review of his book by Coral Lorenzen in the APRO Newsletter and the comments, letters, and notes found in the pages of Project Blue Book files, and critical reading of his works indicate that there was an agenda at work in Menzel's corpus. Revelations of his involved with  the intelligence community also make clear that what he did he did with clear purpose and perhaps under higher orders. 

The goal was to discredit - by any means possible - the subject, leaders, and evidence of the UFO community.