From 1966 to 1968, the U.S. Air Force funded a $500,000 UFO study at the University of Colorado under physicist Edward Condon, the Condon Committee, which officially concluded that further scientific study of UFOs was unwarranted, directly leading to the termination of Project Blue Book in 1969.

A 1966 internal memo by project coordinator Robert Low revealed he had told university administrators the study would be designed to appear objective while predetermined to find nothing significant, a revelation that led the civilian research group NICAP to withdraw its cooperation. One-third of the 90 cases the committee examined remained unexplained in its own final report.