Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency memo, dated 22 August 1952 and approved for release on 24 January 1972, reports on searches for mentions of flying saucers in the Soviet and satellite press. Files turned up no factual press mentions in the past two years. They did turn up a 10 June 1951 Moscow broadcast and an August 1952 Budapest newspaper article, and both called saucer reports an American attempt to fan war hysteria. FAID was asked to have its field stations report any further Iron Curtain mentions.
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1. A search of files has so far produced no factual evidence that subject has been mentioned in the Soviet Satellite press within the past two years. It is believed that a derisive comment was made in a Russian news paper in 1948 on this subject but so far the article has not been found. 2. FAID has one broadcast on this subject, dated 10 June 1951, which is quoted below Summary - In what appears to be Moscow's first mention of Flying Saucers "Listener's Mailbag" answers questions on the subject to the effect that "The Chief of Molecular Physics in the US Naval Research Bureau" explained them recently as used for stratospheric studies. US Government circles know all along of the harmless nature of these objects, but if they refrained from denying "false reports; the purpose behind such tactics was to fan war hysteria in the country." 3. A State Department cable recently received from Budapest quotes the August 14th copy of Szabad Kop as follows: "Flying sugar storms are another American attempt to fan war hysteria." Radar deduction of saucers is quoted in the article and it comments on the ridiculous aspects of the source of the mystery. The article concludes that it is part of American rulers propaganda to prove the Western countries are threatening. 4. FAID has been requested to alert the field stations to any mention of Flying Saucers by Iron Curtain countries. APPROVED FOR RELEASE DATE 24 JAN 72 Assistant Director for Operations
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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. 1 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.