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.
Bon. Gordon Scherer House Office Building Washington 25, D.C. ## Dear Mr. Scherer: Several weks ago a picture of a UFO was shown on the Dave Garroway show. It was the famous Brazilian UFO. It was taken on board the Brazilian Navy IGY ship in daylight and in full view of about a hundred persons. It was developed aboard in the presence of the officers of the ship. It was certified as being authentic by the Navy, released to the press by the Brazilian President himself. It was in the headlines of all the Brazilian newspapers for a week. It created such tremendous public interest that a Congressional investigation followed, and as a result much more UFO information was made public. Now the American Air Force has labeled this picture a hoax! Of course I am concerned about the affect of this on our campaign to get the UFO situation opened up in this country. But I am even more concerned as to what affect this will have on our relations with Brazil. The Brazilians know about their UFOs. I have copies of the magazine O TRUZEIRO in which many outstanding incidents are frankly and openly discussed. I recently received a seven page report on censorship in Brazil from Dr. Olavo Juntas, Brazil's best known UFO researcher. What censorship there is in Brazil is largely at our insistence and the authorities don't like even that much. There have been an average of six to eight sightings/month for fifty months, and sometimes there are as many as thirty in a two hour period. How are these well informed people going to react to hearing their President and several high Navy officials called frauds? You may not agree with this at present, Mr. Scherer, but the American Air Force is withholding evidence even from Congressmen, and I feel strongly that the time has long since come when this dangerous situation should be cleared up. ATIC has now admitted hiding the Project Grudge report by marking it "secret", and admitted that the CIA is involved in the UFO investigation. On the other hand it has denied many serious incidents it had previously confirmed. Why, why does there have to be secrecy at all? What is the CIA covering so desperately that it is necessary to make such incredible charges against the head of a friendly government? I have a good understanding of scientific method, and I am not a crackpot. The Air Force "explanations" many times simply do not explain, and their statistics are obviously contrived. The feeling about UFOs has changed in Cincinnati. There hasn't been a tongue-in-cheek article published for over a year. As General O'Keefe said last December, and Senator Johnson has said recently, UFOs are serious business. Won't you, Sir, lend your help by making a stand for open Congressional hearings? And if you feel you can't do that, at least do something about the Brazilian affair. Thank you. 334 Thrall St, Apt 3 Cincinnati 20, Ohio Sincerely Catherine Carter Golden
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.