Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency information report, marked as unevaluated information and dated 1966, relays a pilot's account of a sighting on 17 June 1966 near Tehran. While circling the Rudashur beacon at about 18,000 feet, the source saw a brilliant white sphere on the horizon toward the Soviet Union. It grew larger and fainter over four to five minutes. Another airliner also saw it. The pilot suggested it may have been gases from a man-made explosion lit by the sun.
“The Advance”1 page
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
unless one were alerted to look for it. The reason for its being obscured from the ground is attributed to the abrupt rise of the very high mountain range north of the city in the direction of the phenomenon. 3. I don't know what caused this strange occurrence which we observed. I had never seen anything resembling it in over 20 years of flying experience. One theory advanced to me was that the sphere was a "false moon" and that such a phenomenon was seen near Rome, Italy. My feeling is that the sphere was formed by gases emanating perhaps from a man-made explosion. These gases forming the sphere may have been illuminated by the sun from the back side. If this were the case, it would account for the diminishing intensity as the density of the gases decreased with the expansion of the sphere.
Not linked to a story yet.
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 3 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.