Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum, dated 26 March 1956, was sent by Deputy Director/Intelligence Robert Amory, Jr. to the Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence. It points to an article in the 17 March 1956 issue of the French magazine MATCH about a radar photograph of a mysterious celestial object that an airline pilot also reported seeing. Amory asks whether the agency keeps in touch with the Air Force center on foreign sightings. Noting that Mars would soon make an unusually close approach to Earth, he urges the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) to keep following the subject so it can refute spectacular published reports.
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MELDRANDUM FOR: Assistant Director/Scientific Intelligence SUBJECT Flying Saucers 1. At Arden House my attention was called to the 17 March 1956 issue of the French popular magazine, MATCH, which had an article on a particularly challenging "sighting" of a MDG (mysterieux objet celestiel) in the form of a radar photograph confirmed by a visual sighting by the pilot of a scheduled airline. 2. Are we keeping in touch with the Air Force center on these things? Does it concern itself with foreign "sightings" such as the above? 3. I am also informed that in the coming year Mars will reach its closest point to the Earth in a long period. Outlandish as it may seen, I do feel that CSI has the responsibility to keep its finger on this general subject if for no other purpose than to arm the front office with the refutation of the more spectacular published reports. ROBERT ALORY, JR. Deputy Director/Intelligence
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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.