Documents / FOIA release
This is a Foreign Broadcast Information Service cable dated 20 April 1988, released by the CIA in 1997. It carries a Xinhua report from Beijing about a UFO that passengers on airliner No. 2606 saw on 18 March near Hami, Xinjiang. They described a glowing, basketball-sized object that flew alongside the plane, split in two and had a green ring of light. Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Atmospheric Physics concluded that it was a high-frequency discharge plasma fireball.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
PASSENGERS SAW A FLYING OBJECT OUT OF THE WINDOWS. THE OBJECT, ABOUT THE SIZE OF A BASKETBALL, WAS "BEAMING LIKE A SEARCHLIGHT" AND FLYING ALONGSIDE THE PLANE. THEN THE OBJECT CHANGED DIRECTION AND SPLIT INTO TWO--A SMALLER BALL ABOVE AND A BEAN-SHAPED BELOW. PASSENGERS SAID THEY SAW A GREEN RING OF LIGHT AROUND THE OBJECT. SCIENTISTS NOW BELIEVE THAT WHAT THE PASSENGERS SAW WAS AN IONIZED BALL OF GAS WHICH, ACCORDING TO HYDROKINETIC THEORY, RESULTED FROM THE ELECTRIC DISCHARGE OF LIGHTNING AND SEISMIC ROCK, AS WELL AS THE VIOLENT OSCILLATION OF ELECTROMAGNETISM IN THE AIR. "THE EXISTENCE OF PLASMAS IN THE IONIZED STRATUM OF THE ATMOSPHERE IS COMMON," SAID ZOU YOUSUO, ONE OF THE RESEARCHERS AT THE INSTITUTE. IN THE XINJIANG CASE, HE EXPLAINED, THE GAS FORMED BY ELECTRONS, IONS, AND UNIONIZED NEUTRAL PARTICLES WAS A HIGH-FREQUENCY DISCHARGE PLASMA APPEARING IN THE FORM OF A FIREBALL. THE GREEN RING OF LIGHT WAS PROBABLY THE RESULT OF ELECTRIC DISCHARGE OF A HIGH-FREQUENCY MAGNETIC FIELD. NNNN
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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. 2 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.