Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency briefing from 22 August 1952 presents the Office of Scientific Intelligence review of the Air Force flying saucer investigation, with attachments dated 14 and 19 August. It traces sightings from 1947 and explains most as balloons, aircraft, astronomical bodies or atmospheric effects. About 20% remain unexplained. The briefing rules out US or Soviet weapons and space ships. Its main concerns are psychological warfare, false alerts to air defense, and civilian saucer groups.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
a blip. Both pilots sighted an object and one locked on with his AI equipment. Reaching his maximum allowable altitude, he triggered his camera and the negative shows "an object." Since 1947, there have been about 1500 official reports of sightings plus an enormous volume of letters, phone calls and press reports. During this July alone, official reports totalled 250. Of the 1500, ATIC carries 20% as unexplained and of those received since the first of this year, 20%. The number of sightings might be reduced to 10% on the basis of more information or further investigation. How to shift away from Air Force for a moment and into the public domain, there are four major theories in explanation of the Flying Saucer. First; that it is a U.S. Secret weapon development. This has been denied officially at the highest level of government and to make doubly certain we queried Dr. Zitnan, Chairman of the Research and Development Board. On a Top Secret basis, he, too, denies it. However, in the light of the Manhattan District early super security, two factors might be mentioned which tend to confirm the denials - first, the official action of alerting all Air Force commands to intercept, and second, the unbelievable risk aspect of such flights in established airlanes.
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. 29 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.