Brown founds NICAP
Brown founded the National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena in Washington (usually dated 24 October 1956), the most influential civilian UFO group of its time; within months he was replaced by Donald Keyhoe.
1956 CE · 38.91, -77.04 · status: official
The account
Brown thought flying saucers might use the kind of propulsion he was working on. He was forced out as director in early 1957; some accounts say the board objected to him steering funds towards his own research, which is reported but not confirmed. Under Keyhoe NICAP grew to about 15,000 members and pressed Congress for hearings. A contemporary NEA wire story (c. 1957, kept by the CIA) shows how NICAP presented itself under Keyhoe. Members could stay secret and paid dues of $7.50, and the group promised lie-detector tests for contactees. The story names retired Adm. Delmer S. Fahrney as 'a founder' and former DCI Roscoe Hillenkoetter as a board member. Haines's 1997 CIA history says Hillenkoetter resigned from NICAP in 1962.
Connections in the atlas
- Thomas Townsend Brown
- The Coolidge tube that seemed to change weight
- The 'gravitator' patent and the Biefeld–Brown effect
- Naval Research Laboratory and the S-48 gravity expedition
- Project Winterhaven
- Tests in Paris for SNCASO
- The 'gravitics' boom and the Electrogravitics Systems report
- The Bahnson laboratory (Whitehall-Rand)
- The electrokinetic patents
- Rock electricity on Catalina Island
- The lifter tests: ARL, NASA and Tajmar
- MIT's ion-wind aeroplane