Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency letter, dated 27 January 1953, is from Assistant Director H. Marshall Chadwell to Dr. Julius A. Stratton, Provost of MIT. It explains that CIA gathered a panel of scientists to study unidentified flying objects and says the agency agrees with the panel's conclusions. It adds that CIA's interest in the subject was kept restricted. Attached material includes a memo on the Advisory Group chaired by Dr. H. P. Robertson, which found the objects pose no threat to United States security. The panel's charge and a list of possible explanations are also attached.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
## POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS A. Hysteria, hallucinations, hoaxes, etc. (Psychological) B. Misidentifications of conventional objects: 1. Aircraft, missiles, searchlight reflections, etc. (max-made, controlled) .2. Balloons, kites, etc. (man-made, uncontrolled) 3. Bird, bugs, etc. (animal) 4. Dust, seeds (e.g. dandelion), paper, etc. (foreign matter) ## C. Natural Phenomena: 1. Light ais, reflections, refractions, etc. 2. Anoimious radar propagation 3. Ionization, static electricity, ball lighting, etc. ; 4. Planets, meteors and other astrological bodies. 5. Others. D. Unconventional max-made devices: su 2: 2. USSR and other foreign E. Extraterrestrial origin 1. Animal 2. Machine
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. 6 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.