Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency study by Gerald K. Haines traces the Agency's involvement with UFOs from 1947 to 1990. It draws on records from a file review that DCI R. James Woolsey ordered in 1993. According to the study, CIA concern was substantial until the early 1950s, and after that the Agency paid only limited attention. The study covers the 1953 Robertson panel and its finding that UFOs posed no threat. It also reports that U-2 and OXCART flights accounted for many sightings, and it describes CIA efforts to conceal its role.
“Edwards Air Force Base”3 pages
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
operation responsible only to the President on UFOs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. UFOlogists had long argued that, following a flying saucer crash in New Mexico in 1947, the government not only recovered debris from the crashed saucer but also four or five alien bodies. According to some UFOlogists, the government clamped tight security around the project and has refused to divulge its investigation results and research ever since. $ ^{91} $ In September 1994, the US Air Force released a new report on the Roswell incident that concluded that the debris found in New Mexico in 1947 probably came from a once top secret balloon operation, Project MOGUL, designed to monitor the atmosphere for evidence of Soviet nuclear tests. $ ^{92} $
Circa 1984, a series of documents surfaced which some UFOlogists said proved that President Truman created a top secret committee in 1947, Majestic-12, to secure the recovery of UFO wreckage from Roswell and any other UFO crash sight for scientific study and to examine any alien bodies recovered from such sites. Most if not all of these documents have proved to be fabrications. Yet the controversy persists. $ ^{93} $
Like the JFK assassination conspiracy theories, the UFO issue probably will not go away soon, no matter what the Agency does or says. The belief that we are not alone in the universe is too emotionally appealing and the distrust of our government is too pervasive to make the issue amenable to traditional scientific studies of rational explanation and evidence.
Like the JFK assassination conspiracy theories, the UFO issue probably will not go away soon, no matter what the Agency does or says.
## NOTES
1. See the 1973 Gallup Poll results printed in The New York Times, 29 November 1973, p. 45 and Philip J. Klass, UFOs: The Public Deceived (New York: Prometheus Books, 1983), p. 3.
2. See Klass, UFOs, p. 3; James S. Gordon, "The UFO Experience," Atlantic Monthly (August 1991), pp. 82-92; David Michael Jacobs, The UFO Controversy in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975); Howard Blum, Out There: The Government's Secret Quest for Extraterrestrials (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990); Timothy Good, Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-Up (New York: William Morrow, 1987); and Whitley Strieber, Communion: The True Story (New York: Morrow, 1987).
3. In September 1993 John Peterson, an acquaintance of Woolsey's, first approached the DCI with a package of heavily sanitized CIA material on UFOs released to UFOlogist Stanton. T. Friedman. Peterson and Friedman wanted to know the reasons for the redactions. Woolsey agreed to look into the matter. See Richard J. Warshaw, Executive Assistant, note to author, 1 November 1994; Warshaw, note to John H. Wright, Information and Privacy Coordinator, 31 January 1994; and Wright, memorandum to Executive Secretariat, 2 March 1994. (Except where noted, all citations to CIA records in this article are to the records collected for the 1994 Agency-wide search that are held by the Executive Assistant to the DCI).
4. See Hector Quintanilla, Jr., "The Investigation of UFOs," Vol. 10, No. 4, Studies in Intelligence (fall 1966): pp.95-110 and CIA, unsigned memorandum, "Flying Saucers," 14 August 1952. See also Good, Above Top Secret, p. 253. During World War II, US pilots reported "foo fighters" (bright lights trailing US aircraft). Fearing they might be Japanese or German secret weapons, OSS investigated but could find no concrete evidence of enemy weapons and often filed such reports in the "crackpot" category. The OSS also investigated possible sightings of German V-1 and V-2 rockets before their operational use during the war. See Jacobs, UFO Controversy, p. 33. The Central Intelligence Group, the predecessor of the CIA, also monitored reports of "ghost rockets" in Sweden in 1946. See CIG, Intelligence Report, 9 April 1947.
5. Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 156 and Quintanilla, "The Investigation of UFOs," p. 97.
6. See US Air Force, Air Material Command, "Unidentified Aerial Objects: Project SIGN, no. F-TR 2274, IA, February 1949, Records of the US Air Force Commands, Activities and Organizations, Record Group 341 National Archives, Washington, DC.
7. See US Air Force, Projects GRUDGE and BLUEBOOK Reports 1-12 (Washington, DC; National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, 1968) and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, pp. 50-54.
8. See Cabell, memorandum to Commanding Generals Major Air Commands, "Reporting of Information on Unconventional Aircraft," 8 September 1950 and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 65.
9. See Air Force, Projects GRUDGE and BLUE BOOK and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 67. 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. 18 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.