Gen. William M. Garland

Brigadier General William M. Garland was a United States Air Force officer who played a significant role in early UFO investigations during the 1950s. He served as chief of the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC), overseeing aspects of Project Blue Book and related efforts. Garland witnessed a UFO himself, prompting him to advocate for serious scrutiny of the phenomenon, including joining General Charles P. Cabell's staff and commissioning the Battelle Memorial Institute's statistical analysis (Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14) in 1954. He approved press releases on UFO analyses, such as the 1952 sea gull theory for certain sightings, and argued for advanced instrumentation like cameras with diffraction gratings. In 1967, as part of the Foreign Technology Division, he was briefed that over 11,000 sightings posed no threat and denied extraterrestrial origins. Garland supported the 1953 Robertson Panel, expressing opinions for greater field investigations by intelligence officers.