NICAP
NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) was an American civilian UFO research organization that operated from 1956 to 1980 and focused on collecting eyewitness reports and criticizing official U.S. UFO policy.
NICAP, full name National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, was a civilian organization operating in the United States, founded in 1956 with the aim of systematically collecting and investigating reports of UFO sightings.
Activities
The organization ran a volunteer network that interviewed witnesses, collected documents and sought to organize sightings with scientific rigor. NICAP published publications and reports that analyzed accounts from military and civilian aircrews, as well as from other credible witnesses.
For a long time the organization was led by Donald Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps major who had previously written books about the UFO phenomenon and actively pushed for a congressional investigation of the subject.
Position on official policy
NICAP took a critical stance toward the U.S. Air Force's official UFO investigation programs, including Project Blue Book. According to the organization, the military withheld or classified information that would support the view that some UFO sightings cannot be explained in conventional ways. By contrast, the official finding throughout was that the vast majority of cases are identifiable as natural or man-made phenomena.
Dissolution and legacy
NICAP was founded in October 1956 by inventor Thomas Townsend Brown, but from 1957 to 1969 the organization was led by retired Marine Corps major Donald Keyhoe. He had previously written books about the UFO phenomenon and actively pushed for a congressional investigation of the subject. For a time, retired admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first director of the CIA, also sat on the board. NICAP reached its peak in the early 1960s, with some 14,000 members. Its decline was set off by the Condon Report, commissioned by the U.S. Air Force and released in 1969, which concluded that there is nothing extraordinary about the UFO phenomenon, and interest declined as a result. That same year, the board forced Keyhoe into retirement over financial and management objections, and internal disputes further weakened the organization, which dissolved at the end of 1980. Its archive was purchased by the UFO research center CUFOS; today the records are maintained in Albuquerque by the National UFO Historical Records Center (NUFOHRC). NICAP's collection and publications, including the 1964 The UFO Evidence, remain important reference points to this day for researchers studying the history of the subject.