Editing Project Blue Book (section)

===End===
In response to the Condon Committee's conclusions, Secretary of the Air Force [[Robert C. Seamans, Jr.]] announced that Blue Book would soon be closed because further funding "cannot be justified either on the grounds of national security or in the interest of science."<ref name=clark480>Jerome Clark, ''The UFO Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial'', p. 480</ref> The last publicly acknowledged day of Blue Book operations was December 17, 1969. However, researcher Brad Sparks,<ref>[http://www.project1947.com/shg/proceedings/shgproceed1.pdf Proceedings of the Sign Historical Group UFO History Workshop]</ref> citing research from the May 1970 issue of NICAP's ''UFO Investigator'', reports that the last day of Blue Book activity was actually January 30, 1970. According to Sparks, Air Force officials wanted to keep the Air Force's reaction to the UFO problem from overlapping into a fourth decade, and thus altered the date of Blue Book's closure in official files.

Blue Book's files were sent to the Air Force Archives at [[Maxwell Air Force Base]] in [[Alabama]]. Major David Shea was to later claim that Maxwell was chosen because it was "accessible yet not too inviting."<ref name=clark480 />

Ultimately, Project Blue Book stated that UFOs sightings were generated as a result of:
* A mild form of [[mass hysteria]].
* Individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a [[hoax]] or seek publicity.
* [[Psychopathological]] persons.
* Misidentification of various conventional objects.

In April 2003, the USAF publicly indicated that there were no immediate plans to re-establish any official government UFO study programs.<ref name=usaf>[https://web.archive.org/web/20030624053806/http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=188 USAF Fact Sheet 95-03]</ref> However, in December 2017 it was disclosed that a new secret UFO study titled the [[Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program]] (AATIP) was funded at 22 million dollars from 2007 to 2012.<ref name="NYT-20171216">{{cite news |last1=Cooper |first1=Helene |last2=Blumenthal |first2=Ralph |last3=Kean |first3=Lesie |title=Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/politics/pentagon-program-ufo-harry-reid.html |date=December 16, 2017 |work=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=December 16, 2017 }}</ref>