Project Bear is a large, well-known research organization in the Midwest.  The several hundred engineers and scientists who make up their staff run from experts on soils to nuclear physicists.  They would make these people available to me to assist Project Grudge on any problem that might arise from a UFO report.  They did not have a staff astronomer or psychologist, but they agreed to get them for us on a subcontract basis.  Besides providing experts in every field of science, they would make two studies for us; a study of how much a person can be expected to see and remember from a UFO sighting, and a statistical study of UFO reports.  The end product of the study of the powers of observation of a UFO observer would be an interrogation form.

Ever since the Air Force had been in the UFO business, attempts had been made to construct a form that a person who had seen a UFO could fill out.  Many types had been tried but all of them had major disadvantages.  Project Bear, working with the psychology department of a university, would study all of the previous questionnaires, along with actual UFO reports, and try to come up with as near a perfect interrogation form as possible.  The idea was to make the form simple and yet extract as much and as accurate data as possible from the observer.

The second study that Project Bear would undertake would be a statistical study of all UFO reports.  Since 1947 the Air Force had collected about 650 reports, but if our plan to encourage UFO reports worked out the way we expected this number could increase tenfold.  To handle this volume of reports, Project Bear said that they would set up a complete UFO file on IBM punch cards.  Then if we wanted any bit of information from the files, it would be a matter of punching a few buttons on an IBM card-sorting machine, and the files would be sorted electronically in a few seconds.  Approximately a hundred items pertaining to a UFO report would be put on each card.  These items included everything from the time the UFO was seen to its position in the sky and the observer’s personality.  The items punched on the cards would correspond to the items on the questionnaires that Project Bear was going to develop.

Besides giving us a rapid method of sorting data, this IBM file would give us a modus operandi file.  Our MO file would be similar to the MO files used by police departments to file the methods of operations of a criminal.  Thus when we received a report we could put the characteristics of the reported UFO on an IBM punch card, put it into the IBM machine, and compare it with the characteristics of other sightings that had known solutions.  The answer might be that out of the one hundred items on the card, ninety-five were identical to previous UFO reports that ducks were flying over a city at night reflecting the city’s lights.

On the way home from the meeting Colonel Kirkland and I were both well satisfied with the assistance we believed Project Bear could give to Project Grudge.