Documents / FOIA release
This 1960 Central Intelligence Agency memo, signed P. G. Sirroga, responds to a note about Congressman Gordon H. Scherer and attaches a draft reply along with a letter from Catherine Golden of Cincinnati. It says the Air Force told Mrs. Golden that a U.S. Naval Attache evaluation found the Brazilian UFO photo was false, taken by a free lance photographer noted for trick photography. Golden's letter protests the hoax label and asks Scherer to seek open Congressional hearings.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
Mr. G. L. Cary Deputy Assistant Director for Collection/OSI Reply to your Note Regarding Gordon H. Scherer 1. We have investigated this with the Air Force and find that Mrs. Golden telegraphed the Secretary of State along the same lines. She has been carrying on correspondence with the Air Force for quite some time on the general subject of UFO's. (Attached is their reply to Mrs. Golden.) The State Department referred the telegram to the Air Force who, in turn, answered Mrs. Golden to the effect that the U.S. Naval Attache evaluation indicates that the picture was false. The photo was taken by a free lance photographer noted for his trick photography. It was not, as Mrs. Golden states, developed in the presence of anyone. 2. I do not believe we should concern ourselves with questions in Mrs. Golden's letter that do not concern CIA; therefore, we have covered only those questions. The Air Force is responsible and is doing a very good job of public information in this field and it has been our past procedure to refer all matters to them when it does not implicate CIA. 3. I think our Naval attache's final comment on the whole affair sums it up very well: "It is the reporting officer's private opinion that a flying saucer sighting would be unlikely at the very barren island of Trindade, as everyone knows Martians are extremely comfort loving creatures." 4. Attached is a draft reply for Congressman Scharer per your request. P. G. SIRROGA
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.