Jim Moseley: The Case of the Smoking Saucer

Jim Moseley was an early UFO researcher and author, the publisher of the UFO magazine and newsletter Saucer News and Saucer Smear. The following article is reprinted from JimMoseley.com as a birthday tribute.

James W. Moseley, August 4, 1931 –  November 16, 2012

Peru: May 1954

James W. Moseley, circa 1954

Jim Moseley’s early flying saucer days were interrupted by frequent visits to Peru for treasure hunting, or vice versa. During a trip there in May 1954, Jim met a man, Pedro Bardi Zeña, who had  a dramatic story and a unique photograph of a flying saucer. Bardi told him of a UFO that left a distinctive trail of vapor or smoke as it streaked across the jungle sky.

Flying Saucer, Madre de Dios section of Peru

Jim’s original report:

Jim Moseley’s original file, from an unpublished manuscript.

The story and photo was first published in the US in the April 1955 issue of Saucer News  (then known as Nexus).

NEXUS, later retitled Saucer News.

NICAP takes a look

NICAP’s UFO Investigator, Vol.1 #2, Aug/Sept.1957

NICAP (the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena), while reporting on a similar UFO report, checked with Jim on the Peru photo and the details behind it:

“Smoke Trailing Disc Reported Over New Zealand Similar to 1952 Peru Case”

NICAP believes members may be interested in the accompanying picture supposed to have been made of a smoke-trailing object over Peru in 1952. The photograph and extracts from the sighting report are reproduced with the kind permission of James Moseley, editor of SAUCER NEWS.

In a letter dated August 10, 1957, Mr. Moseley gave NICAP the following account of the incident:

“In Lima I met Señor Pedro Bardi, who is an agricultural engineer. On July 19, 1952, while on a farm in the Madre de Dios section of Peru, he and others saw a saucer. It was about 4:30 p.m. and they were talking to Lima by radio.

“Suddenly, according to Bardi, the radio went dead. They looked out the window and saw a round object going by at high speed. (The witnesses included Pedro Arellano, owner of the farm.) The object such had passed; it was at an estimated 100 meters altitude and was a little smaller than a DC-3, according to Bardi. It made a buzzing sound as it went by.”

The object’s speed, Moseley explains, was determined by a report that it was seen four minutes later near Porto Maldonado, 120 kilometers distant. This speed was computed at 1117 miles per hour.

The photograph was secured from a customs administrator named Domlngo Troncosco, who said he had taken it as the object flew near the port. Though the photo shows a cigar-shaped object instead of the round shape Bardi described, this could possibly have been due to an elongated effect caused by speed.

“It seems obvious to me,” Moseley told NICAP, “that the photo is genuine. Incidentally, I (strongly doubt) if this particular saucer was anything but earth-made.”

Though NICAP has no reason to doubt the picture’s authenticity, we are unable to make an accurate analysis without the negative.

 NICAP’s UFO Investigator, Vol.1 #2, Aug/Sept.1957

Project Blue Book

What Jim and NICAP did not know, was that Project Blue Book already had a file on this case. Jim accurately repeated information given to him, but some details he had were inaccurate. There was a newspaper story on it, and even some degree of official investigation.

The photo was not from 1952, but taken in July 1951. The  report by Col. McHenry Hamilton Jr., states that the Peruvian Air Force mentions a total of three photographs, supposedly taken by different individuals, and that it was their opinion that it was hoaxed with “a fairly clever attempt at trick photography” for “commercial reasons.”

That’s very interesting for several reasons, but chiefly for the mention of additional photos, which have not been seen since.

Report by Col. McHenry Hamilton, Jr. See link below for full file.

Project Blue Book case file on Peru UFO, July 19, 1951

El Comercio (Lima), August 15, 1951. as reproduced in Project Blue Book

A Hoax?

Did Jim get conned? Bardi had heard of Jim’s interest in flying saucers, which is the reason he sought him out and brought the story and photograph to him. Jim was given no reason to doubt Bard, the picture, or the details of the story. He went on to present the material just as he’d received it, and few have ever given serious question to the authenticity of the photo itself.

The Legacy

The biggest exposure the photo received was in the Flying Saucers Look Magazine Special, 1967. The full page photo appeared with only a brief caption in tiny print, where it credits Saucer News for the picture. This magazine was a mainstream publication that reached millions of readers.

Flying Saucers Look Magazine Special, 1967

The picture has continued to receive exposure world-wide, frequently reprinted, often  without attribution, and in a cropped form. It’s been seen in countless UFO books, publications, websites and documentaries.

The story picked up some twists over the years. The smoky trail behind the UFO had evolved into something more exotic. In an Open Minds article by Antonio Huneeus, Jim was disturbed to find references to “angel hair,” the silky ephemeral substance that was once associated with flying saucers. Jim wrote me, “The photo with commentary, is in the December – January 2012 Open Minds. In all these years, I have not heard of any other source of info on this photo exceptme. Yet their commentary contains additional material that I am quite sure is false!”

It was this “angel hair” article that prompted Jim to ask me if I could track down additional information on the photo. The report I prepared for him ultimately became the foundation for this article.

A Sour Note

Jim was insulted in 2012, when Michael Swords, in  trying to sort out the photo’s history,  questioned its authenticity due to Jim’s reputation as a prankster over the years:

This picture seems to have reached the American public via James Moseley. That fact is almost enough to make you quit bothering right there. Moseley, however, nice a guy he may or may not be, has spent a life fouling the waters of UFOlogy with hoaxes, misrepresentations, rumors, misplaced “humor” … it has been an almost wholly unhelpful “career” to the field.

Apparently, Swords’ prejudice against Jim prevented him from making any attempt to contact Jim to find out more about the photo. Jim considered responding to Swords’ sore-headed misrepresentations and rumors, but decided to quit bothering right there.

The Smoking Saucer Flies On

“My picture,” is what Jim called the Peru saucer photograph, and he was proud to have introduced it to flying saucer study. He always thought the photo was genuine, but that it was likely just pictured an aircraft of earthly origin.

I think Jim would have been happy to know that there’s still interest in the photo, and that more information on it is coming to light.


Curt Collins, © 2014 

. . .

Chronology of Publications and Examinations

Special thanks to Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos for the information on which this list is based.

Wendelle Stevens & August Roberts, UFO Photographs Around the World, Vol 2, 1985, p 135.

El Comercio (Lima), August 15, 1951.

Project Blue Book:
http://www.fold3.com/image/7008029/, http://www.fold3.com/image/7008033/ and  http://www.fold3.com/image/7008040/

James W. Moseley, unpublished manuscript, page 124

Nexus, April 1955, cover. (Saucer News,) 1st US publication, includes Moseley’s desc.

The UFO Investigator, Vol I, No 2, August-September 1957, pp 12-13, quoting James Moseley letter to NICAP, August 10, 1957.

Jimmy Guieu, Black out sur les soucoupes volantes, Fleuve Noir, 1956, plate 10.

Richard Hall, The UFO Evidence, NICAP, 1964, p 88.

Recap of NICAP article- brief listing.

Epoca (Milano), September 4, 1966, pp 32-33.

Flying Saucers Look Magazine Special, 1967. Photo only, no details, credits Saucer News.

Max B. Miller (ed), Flying Saucers Pictorial, Arizill, 1967, p 55.

L. Kettlecamp, Investigating UFOs, Ronald Stacy, 1972, p 49.

Guillermo Roncoroni & Gustavo Alvarez, Los OVNI y la evidencia fotográfica, Cielosur, 1978, p 207.

Wendelle Stevens & August Roberts, UFO Photographs Around the World, Vol 2, 1985, p 135.

Loren Gross, UFOs: A History. 1951, 1983, p 35; and UFOs: A History.

1952  June-July 20th. Supplemental Notes, 2001, pp 54-55.

Giuseppe Stilo, Ultimatum alla Terra, UPIAR, 2002, pp 487-488, quoting Gazetta di Parma, July 6, 1952.

Michael Hesemann, UFOs. Besucher aus dem Weltall, Könemann, 2001, p 45.

James Moseley & Karl T. Pflock, Shockingly Close to the Truth!, Prometheus, 2002, pp 140-142.

Larry Robinson (2002). Dismisses as hoax: “Montage: Toy balloon, cotton, scene.”

Temporal doorway site by Mark Cashman circa 2004 

Kentaro Mori, Ceticismo Aberto, “Puerto Maldonado,” 2009   Includes comparison to “roll cloud”

Angels’ Hair Reports Index Page July 19, 1951. Puerto Maldonado, Peru 

Open Minds Magazine article by Antonio Huneeus Dec-Jan, 2012

James W. Moseley, Saucer Smear, 444, September 15, 2011, p 8. (Presents Moseley’s manuscript notes with additional comments. )

Michael Swords, Can we learn anything from UFO Photos?

The UFO Anniversary and the Giant New York Convention of 1967

John Keel, Gray Barker and Jim Moseley

On the 20th anniversary of the historic Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting of June 22, 1947, there was an epic event to mark the occasion, the 1967 New York UFO Convention presented by Saucer News,
James W. Moseley and the Congress of Scientific Ufologists.

Some changes to the final programming were made by the time of the event. Kenneth Arnold himself decided not to attend, as did Ray Palmer. Other guests were added to the roster, most notably actor Roy Thinnes, star of the hit ABC television series, The Invaders, a show about a crusading flying saucer witness.

Donald Keyhoe and his National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon, disapproved of the convention including Contactees, and NICAP published an article in their journal, The UFO Investigator, before the event, condemning it.

The UFO Investigator, May-June 1967 (PDF)

Despite the condemnation from NICAP, the convention went on to be a hit, reportedly the largest indoor UFO convention at the time.

John Keel, lecturing to a packed house.

NICAP did get in a word after the show, though in the forma of a newspaper article by the director of their Connecticut faction.

George W. Earley (circa 2007)

George W. Earley at the time was president of NICAP-CONN, the Connecticut Affiliate of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon, and employed as Aerospace Administrative Engineer at United Aircraft. He wrote an unfavorable review of the NYC saucer convention for the Hartford Courant, July 9, 1967:

"Hippies, Old Ladies, Over 30 Types Orbit in Flying Saucer Circles."

Hartford Courant, July 9, 1967

When James Moseley, congress chairman and publisher of "Saucer News," opened the Saturday session, a surprise guest was discovered in the audience Dr. Edward U. Condon.

A hard-nosed approach to saucer spotting was taken by James Randi, a radio - television personality who has been a UFO buff for many years. The amateur astronomer snapped: "I'm getting damned tired of sitting on a cold car bumper at 4 a.m. waiting for Venus to rise so some fool can tell me it is a flying saucer."

"You people," he said "have got to stop believing everything you are told. There are liars and frauds among us right now, but in among all the trash and nonsense perpetrated in the name of ufology, I think there is a small grain of truth."

The Fall 1967 issue of Moseley's Saucer News carried photographs from the convention, may of them contributed by George W. Earley himself.

For more on the historic 1967 convention, see the article by Rick Hilberg,
"Jim Moseley's Giant UFO Show" at
https://www.jimmoseley.com/jims-greatest-hits/

and

Saucer News NYC Convention Memories a photo essay by Karl Machtanz

Captured UFOs and Building Hangar 18: A Chronology

Captured Saucers in Hangars and Related Tales

The Saucers That Time Forgot series on Robert Spencer Carr and the revived UFO crash stories stemmed out of an investigation into when the name “Hangar 18” was first used. The first known published mention of Hangar 18 we located was in the news story reporting Robert S. Carr’s university debate about the reality of extraterrestrials visitations:

The Tampa Tribune Jan. 16, 1974: “Does USAF have UFOs?” by Frank Bentayou: “One of the best-kept secrets of the United States Government is that in Hangar 18 at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, there are two flying saucers of unknown origin, a University of South Florida instructor said yesterday.”

If Carr wasn’t the first to name it, he is certainly responsible for making the name Hangar 18 famous. However, the notion that the US government had captured flying saucers goes much further back. Here are some of the most notable early claims of retrieved UFOs, especially those said to be hidden in an Air Force hangar.

1947: Fakes, Foil from Roswell, Slag from Maury Island and Beyond

Sampling of crashed saucers covered in previous STTF articles.

Within weeks, maybe days, of Kenneth Arnold’s famous sighting, jokers and hoaxers got started producing fake flying saucers. Reports also came in from Roswell and elsewhere of balloon-launched rawin targets mistaken for flying saucers, with the fakes and mistakes often got more coverage than genuine sightings. Some of the stories talked about the discs being captured or turned over to authorities, and that fueled rumors that an actual flying saucer was in the hands of the military.

1949 - 1950

The January 8, 1950, edition of the Atchison, Kansas Daily Globe, reprinted the Dec. 31, 1949 Amarillo Globe-News page one story by editor Wes Izzard, an anonymously sourced account of the Silas Newton Aztec crashed saucer story:

“... the government has collected several flying saucers and are analyzing them at a secret base in California. This base is not far from Los Angeles.”

January 11, 1950: Variety, “Air Force Asked Twenty Questions” by Frank Scully: 

4. Did the Air Force ever make public what the "Explosives," looking like a dismantled flying saucer, were, which they transported in army trucks from a western research base to Dayton, Ohio?

In Behind the Flying Saucers, Scully has a scene where he and Silas Newton meet with Dr. Gee for an interview.

Newton asked, "Where is the little ship?""We have that one in the laboratories at the present time," replied Dr. Gee. "As soon as I get your appointment through I will be authorized to let you inspect it."In time Newton's appointment came through, but by then the ship had been dismantled and reported shipped to Dayton, and all comment thereafter proscribed, denied, or ignored. (Dayton was referring to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.)

In the section summarizing saucer news stories, Scully mentions his own ‘Twenty Questions,” and comes closest to the Wright Field/Hangar 18 legend:

“Queries indicate that flying saucers were dismantled in New Mexico and Arizona and shipped back to Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio and never heard of since.”

1952 

CSI Quarterly Bulletin, Sept. 1952

Civilian Saucer Investigation's Ed Sullivan, "To the Man with the Pickle Jar." 

“CSI has received hundreds of letters from people seeking the facts behind reports of crashed flying saucers, unknown metals which defy laboratory analysis, mysterious top-level rendezvous in the Australian Bush, and the little man from outer space preserved in a pickle jar... a captured saucer being held under wraps at March Field, as rumor has it.”

Sullivan went on to say that the stories are not backed by any evidence:

“In answer, let us say that we do not believe that any facts are in anyone's possession to support such claims... If there were one single iota of fact, certainly someone, somewhere, would be willing to bring it out into the open.”

1953

Silas Newton had been attending early flying saucer conferences, but at the end of 1953 was facing conviction for fraud for oil swindling, selling phony oil-detection devices he claimed used technology from crashed flying saucers. James Moseley interviewed Newton on Dec. 29, 1953. 

“Newton told me that there are two hangars at White Sands at which captured flying saucers are kept. About 15 or 16 saucers are now in government hands. Ordinarily, saucers float toward the earth... saucers contain a mechanism so... it comes gently to rest... The reason some saucers have crashed is that something goes wrong with this mechanism.”

James W. Moseley: Unpublished manuscript

Bill Nash and the Wright Field Story

There was a story circulating among UFO researchers that there was a captured flying similar to what Scully had said, held in secret by the Air Force at “Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio.” Pan American World Airways pilot, Bill Nash became heavily involved in the flying saucer discussion after his own encounter of July 14, 1952, known as the Nash-Fortenberry UFO sighting. He frequently mentioned the "Wright Field Story” in his correspondence, and it later played into him making a sensational claim during a lecture.

In his Oct. 19, 1953 letter to Maj. Donald Keyhoe, Nash  discussed two rumors from an anonymous source involving captured discs. While appearing on a WJZ television program in the fall of 1952 to discuss UFOs:

Before the program, some tall man… took me down the TV hall…He said that the reason that the saucers were over Wash. in droves in July was because the Air Force had operated a radio found in a cracked up saucer.  That the "Wright Field Story” was true - The Air Force had several saucers. 

(More on Bill Nash and Wright Field in 1954.)

1954

CSI Quarterly Bulletin, Jan. 1954

In their final issue, the organization wanted to leave readers with a summary of what their research had determined. Regarding landed or crashed UFOs:

There is no factual evidence to support any claim that a "flying saucer" has ever landed or set down on the ground, even momentarily. (After discussing a It is also easy to understand how a tall tale recounted in a friendly circle can spread until it is accepted as authentic "flying saucer" lore. During the past two years we have followed such a story of a “captured flying saucer” from March Field, where it was kept under a tarpaulin, progressively through three southern California aircraft plants. This is the one made of the transparent metal, which cannot be machined with a diamond fly-cutter. At last report it had been loaded on a truck at the Hughes Aircraft Company plant and was headed for some unknown destination."

Another good quote from the opening:

People want to know what the UAOs are, and where they come from. They aren’t particularly concerned whether the objects are finally proved to be natural phenomena or whether they may be coming from another planet. Just as long as brass curtains cut off from the public the findings of the various governmental investigations, and no other qualified agency is available to give part of the answers, these same people will continue to accept the irresponsible statements of those who would have us believe that the "little men" have landed, or that there is a Venusian living in Pasadena.

Bill Nash again. 

Filling in for his friend, Norman Bean, Bill Nash gave a lecture on flying saucers in March for the Greater Miami Aviation Association. At the end he was asked why he thought the Air force was keeping secrets about saucers. In his answer, Nash gave his opinion based on some rumors he heard, saying he was convinced that the "the Air Force has collected hardware from outer space." There was a reporter in the audience and Nash’s speculative remark became headline news.

The Day, New London, Conn. Mar 23, 1954 

WASHINGTON, March 23 (AP)--A spokesman today termed without basis as assertion that the Air Force has recovered hunks of 'flying saucers' and just isn't telling the public about them... Bill Nash, a Pan American World Airways pilot, told the Greater Miami Aviation association recently he was convinced that 'the air force has collected hardware from outer space. I do not believe the air force cares to make all its findings public so long as the United States is threatened by unfriendly powers,' Nash said.”

In exchanges from the same period with Capt. Joe Hull of Capital Airlines (author of the Airline Pilot magazine article, "The Obituary of the Flying Saucers"), Nash tried to persuade Hull of UFO reality. In his letter of April 18, 1954,  he went deeper into the rumors that ultimately formed the Hangar 18 legend.

He told Hull about this Miami lecture that started the “hardware” controversy, and repeated the WJZ story he told Keyhoe about meeting the mysterious man with saucer secrets.Nash reports how his friend Norman Bean had been told by an AF major that there was “a saucer at Wright Field,” but he couldn’t be quoted. He said Bean also had several reports from “GI’s who saw the thing on a flat-car, but this is a vague one.”Nash goes on to tell about hearing (what he considered to be a deathbed confession) the “Wright Field Story," how “a flying saucer had been found after landing… and the thing had been brought to Wright Field.”

The Wright Field Story by James W. Moseley

The rumors Bill Nash had heard about a captured saucer were widely circulated and reached Jim Moseley, publisher of Saucer News (then called Nexus). From April to May 1954, Jim heard the story and tape recording from Gene Wolfer, about a woman from the Army who was sick with cancer, and through detective work, Moseley tracked down the source to interview her.

She was Vivian Walton, not a WAC, but a former civilian employee of the Signal Corps of Army at Columbus, Ohio. She said that in 1952, a landed (unmanned) saucer was taken through Columbus Army Supply Depot where it where it was photographed before being taken to Wright Field. Moseley checked with the photographer she reluctantly named, who described Walton as “a night girl on the teletype,” without access to secret materials, and was unable to confirm any portion of her saucer story. She’d seemed sincere, but also discussed details like little bodies and the saucer’s magnetic propulsion that couldn’t have come from the experience she described. In Vivian Walton’s library, Moseley spotted a familiar volume, Behind the Flying Saucers.

“It is perhaps significant that the only saucer book that the Walton’s have is Scully’s.”

Moseley’s report on his investigation sensationalized it a bit, emphasizing the ambiguity between the claims versus the denials. It was published in the Sept. 1954 in Nexus as “The Wright Field Story, or Who's Lying?” 

In 1971, the story was expanded into non-fiction book ghost written by Gray Barker,  The Wright Field Story, with some added Saucerian flair and drama. There was no mention of a “Hangar 18” in the story or book until it was reprinted in 1992 with some sensational (not in a good way) new material by Timothy Green Beckley.

Hangar 27?

Valor (The Magazine of Soulcraft), October 9, 1954

Desmond Leslie was the co-author with George Adamski of Flying Saucers Have Landed. When interviewed by George Hunt Williamson for Valor, Leslie said he’d investigated the story of a landed flying saucer held at a California Air Force base. An anonymous witness, "an Air Force man" told him that "President Eisenhower had a 'look-see' at the craft during his Palm Springs vacation." The "rumored saucer at Muroc was actually there," under guard, "in hangar 27." 

1955

The Flying Saucer Council of America' magazine, The Vimana  March 15, 1955, published a story, “Mexican Saucer Landing of 1949 Appears Verifiable... from Three Different Sources” Two versions of the Silas Newton story are given as corroboration, then a 2nd-hand story from an anonymous man’s son: “his son revealed to him, when he was stationed at Wright-Patterson Air base... a huge-semi-truck came into the Air Base, with heavily canopied material jutting out, of immense size... it was shortly driven to a far hangar (was it No. 27? ) where no windows or accessible doors could be discerned.” Frank Scully related either this or a near episode in his ‘Behind the Flying Saucers’ and George Adamski certifies that the above incident is more than likely factual...”

May 23, 1955: Gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen sent an INS wire that "the scientific and aeronautic authorities of Great Britain, after having examined the remains of a mysterious airship… have come to the conclusion that these strange flying objects do not represent optical illusions, nor are they Soviet inventions, but that we have to deal with objects that really fly and that originate from some other planet." It’s believed that she was reporting on the hoax of a flying saucer crash in Spitzbergen, Norway. For a detailed examination of this episode, see Patrick Gross’ page, UFOs at close sight.

Flying Saucer News-Service Research Bulletin Oct 20, 1955 relates a far less specific rumor. Not only was the hangar unnumbered, the name of the base wasn't disclosed, just that the saucer was "being housed in a hangar near the northeast sector" at an “eastern air base.” The Bulletin was published in Ohio, so they weren’t describing Dayton’s Wright Field.

1964

Barry Goldwater was supposedly denied entry to see the saucer secrets at Wright Patterson AFB. The name Hangar 18 or Blue Room seems to have been retroactively attached to this tale in later accounts, not used in describing it originally. The earliest version of this story we were able to locate was in 1974, connected with the news of Robert Spencer Carr’s Aztec revival.

Carr contends that Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) had tried to see UFO material at Wright-Patterson during a visit to the base. Radio station WBSR, Pensacola, reached Goldwater's Phoenix office, where a spokesman said that in 1964. when Goldwater was at the base for a ceremony, he asked to enter a building that he heard contained UFO material. The spokesman said Goldwater was told no one was allowed into the building.

AP story printed in The Circleville Herald, Oct 12 1974 

1965

Aztec's 

"Little Men" 

... again

Interplanetary Intelligence Report Vol. 1, No. 4, Nov. 1965, was published by Hayden C. Hewes. It featured a picture of the infamous German 1950 April Fool's Day "Man from Mars" on page 18.  

The photo is described as one of the "little men" from the Aztec, NM crash, the debris from which they say was trucked to Wright-Patterson AFB. 

The text is all recycled material from Frank Scully's Behind the Flying Saucers, just accompanied by a hoaxed picture the book inspired.

(Note: Found in Project Blue Book, erroneously connected to the Atlanta shaved monkey hoax file.)

1966

John Fuller, Incident At Exeter

Fuller repeated a rumor that helped get the juices flowing again.

There have been, I learned, after I started the research, frequent and continual rumors (and they are only rumors) that in a morgue at Wright-Patterson Field, Dayton, Ohio, lie the bodies of a half dozen or so small humanoid corpses, measuring not more than four and a half feet in height, evidence of one of the few times an extraterrestrial spaceship has allowed itself either to fail or otherwise fall into the clutches of the semicivilized Earth people.

The rumors continued to circulate, resurface and multiply over the years, but few took them seriously until Robert Spencer Carr relaunched the Aztec story in 1974 with his Hangar 18 story. 

. . .

The Blue Room at Wright-Patterson?

The Blue Room, a 1920 novel by Cosmo Hamilton

There’s also supposed to be a mysterious “Blue Room” at Wright-Patterson where they hide the UFO secrets, or maybe that’s another name for Hangar 18. Like with the Hangar 18 term, it’s hard to pinpoint its origin. Maybe it started as a verbal gaffe by John R. Blandford, chief counsel for the House Armed Services Committee?

The Secretary of the Air Force, Harold Brown appeared before the House of Representatives, Committee on Armed Services, Washington, D.C., March 31, 1966. After discussing other topics, the chairman turned to the upcoming “Unidentified Flying Objects Hearing by Committee on Armed Services” to be held on April 5, 1966, an inquiry requested by Michigan Representative Gerald Ford. 

Brown answered a few questions in preparation for the inquiry:

Secretary Brown: We have an investigation going. Of course we have been doing this since 1948, you know, Mr. Chairman, and in 1965, for example, we investigated almost 900 reports. We will put out a written report which the committee can use to answer these questions.Whether we will ever satisfy all the people who have seen or think they have seen unidentified flying objects, I doubt. But I think we should try to at least satisfy the committee and the Congress.  

The Chairman: Yes, sir.  

Mr. Blandford: May I suggest to have the officer in charge of this program, at Wright Patterson, here Tuesday morning to indicate that we did have the people who had it — what do they call it, the blue room ? 

Secretary Brown: Blue Book.  

Mr. Blandford: Have that individual here so it can appear in the record.

"Blue Room" was a familiar name, from restaurants to books and movies. Blandford may not have been the first person to say it instead of Blue Book.

Source: 

United States. Congress. House. Committee on Armed Services. Subcommittee No. 3,, . (1966). Hearings on military posture and H.R. 13456 to authorize appropriations during the fiscal year 1967 for procurement of aircraft, missiles, naval vessels, and tracked combat vehicles, and research, development, test, and evaluation for the Armed Forces, and to maintain parity between military and civilian pay, and for other purposes: before the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, Eighty-ninth Congress, 2nd session. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. (1966)

A digital copy can be found at the Internet Archive.

. . .

Acknowledgements

Thanks and acknowledgements to those who provided support, materials, and background detail for this project.

Claude Falkstrom, my co-author, for his work in digging deeper and finding the stories behind the stories, particularly in the case of Lawrence Brill.

Martin Kottmeyer for reference materials from his own Hangar Minus One.

Isaac Koi, for his dedication to the preservation of UFO literature, which helped greatly in the research of this project.

Also, thanks to those who provided other details, materials and verification:
Lance Moody, Brad Sparks, Roger Glassel, Robert Sheaffer, and Rich Hoffman.