Documents / FOIA release
This Foreign Broadcast Information Service cable was relayed through the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 20 April 1988, and the Central Intelligence Agency released it in August 1997. It carries a Xinhua English-language report on a UFO that passengers aboard airliner No. 2606, flying from Beijing to Urumqi, saw near Hami, Xinjiang, on 18 March. Scientists at the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences concluded that the object was a plasma fireball spinning at high speed in the atmosphere.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
## UNCLASSIFIED PASSENGERS SAW A FLYING OBJECT OUT OF THE WINDOWS. THE OBJECT, ABOUT THE SIZE OF A BASKETBALL, WAS "BEAMING LIKE A SEARCHLIGHT" AND FLYING ALONGSIDE THE PLANE. THEN THE OBJECT CHANGED DIRECTION AND SPLIT INTO TWO--A SMALLER BALL ABOVE AND A BEAN-SHAPED BELOW. PASSENGERS SAID THEY SAW A GREEN RING OF LIGHT AROUND THE OBJECT. SCIENTISTS NOW BELIEVE THAT WHAT THE PASSENGERS SAW WAS AN IONIZED BALL OF GAS WHICH, ACCORDING TO HYDROKINETIC THEORY, RESULTED FROM THE ELECTRIC DISCHARGE OF LIGHTNING AND SEISMIC ROCK, AS WELL AS THE VIOLENT OSCILLATION OF ELECTROMAGNETISM IN THE AIR. "THE EXISTENCE OF PLASMAS IN THE IONIZED STRATUM OF THE ATMOSPHERE IS COMMON," SAID ZOU YOUSUO, ONE OF THE RESEARCHERS AT THE INSTITUTE. IN THE XINJIANG CASE, HE EXPLAINED, THE GAS FORMED BY ELECTRONS, IONS, AND UNIONIZED NEUTRAL PARTICLES WAS A HIGH-FREQUENCY DISCHARGE PLASMA APPEARING IN THE FORM OF A FIREBALL. THE GREEN RING OF LIGHT WAS PROBABLY THE RESULT OF ELECTRIC DISCHARGE OF A HIGH-FREQUENCY MAGNETIC FIELD.
Not linked to a story yet.
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.