Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency information report, dated 18 August 1967, records conversations with Soviet astronomers and scientists about unidentified flying objects in the USSR. Opinions ranged from dismissal to open interest. One scientist suggested UFOs may originate on Venus, and some astronomers described seeing a curious reddish object. Many had read Menzel's book. The report concludes that the USSR has given the UFO problem no official treatment, and that Soviet astronomers might take up the subject more readily than US astronomers, who face official ridicule.
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2. He visited the scientist who was nonconmittal on the subject of UFO's. The scientist who served as translator, a radio astronomer, emphatically stated that he knew of no sightings of UFO's in the USSR and added with a laugh that if they were only seen in the US, they must be of Soviet origin. 3. At the time one of the astronomers mentioned that she had heard of some sightings of unidentified objects near the Caucasus. She was unaware of any study being made of them but was open-minded on the subject. 6. The main visit was to who was very interested in the problem. He had read Menzel G book (which has been translated into Russian) but did not accept his conclusions. knew of some sightings in the northern part of the USSR, but said that reports of such sightings are not printed in Soviet newspapers because they are not regarded as scientific observations. (Comment: this is interesting in view of the readiness of Soviet newspapers to print rather fantastic reports of hypotheses and "observations" suggested by the more imaginative members of the scientific community. Apparently some official sanction is needed.) has been interested in US reports of UFO's and readily accepts their reality. In fact, it is his personal opinion that the UFO's may originate on Venus. He is well aware of the negative effect of "enlightened" scientific opinion on the interpretation of questionable observations as he has had personal INFORMATION REPORT INFORMATION REPORT
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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.