Project Blue Book was the code name for an Air Force program set up in 1952 ... to explain away or debunk as many [UFO] reports as possible in order to mitigate possible panic and shield the public from a genuine national security problem. The prominent astronomer J. Allen Hynek ... was recruited as Blue Books scientific consultant and was indeed initially committed to explaining away flying saucers as natural phenomena or mistaken identifications. Hynek, the former U.F.O. skeptic, eventually concluded that they were a real phenomenon in dire need of scientific attention, with hundreds of cases in the Blue Book files still unexplained. Even many of the closed cases were resolved with ridiculous, often infuriating explanations, sometimes by Hynek himself. Blue Book compiled reports of 12,618 sightings of unidentified flying objects, of which 701 remain unexplained to this day. The mystery of the elusive flying objects is still far from solved. In 1947. Lt. General Nathan Twining ... sent a secret memo on Flying Discs to the commanding general of the Army Air Forces at the Pentagon. Twining stated that the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious. Documents show the C.I.A. then devised a plan for a national policy, as to what should be told the public regarding the phenomenon, in order to minimize risk of panic. The C.I.A. issued a secret report recommending a broad educational program for all intelligence agencies, with the aim of training and debunking. When Blue Book closed in late 1969, the Air Force flatly lied to the American people.