Documents / FOIA release

(EST Pub Date) CIA's Role in the Study of UFO's, 1947-90, by Gerald K. Haines

Central Intelligence Agency · 1999-07-01 · 18 pages · text by OCR

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.

  • p. 1 …James Woolsey ordered another review of all Agency files on UFOs. Using CIA records compiled from…
  • p. 6 …reference file of the activities of the Air Force and other agencies on UFOs. Neither the…
  • p. 7 …central file on the subject of UFOs. ## CIA's U-2 and OXCART as UFOs In…
  • p. 9 …In 1958, Major Keyhoe charged that the Agency was deliberately asking eyewitnesses of UFOs not to…
  • p. 11 …to UFOs. $ ^{81} $ Spaulding was convinced that the Agency was withholding major files on UFOs. Agency…
  • p. 12 …They even turned up an old UFO file under a secretary's desk. The search finally…
  • p. 13 operation responsible only to the President on UFOs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. UFOlogists…
  • p. 16 …Chamberlain, memorandum for DCI, "Evaluation of UFOs," 26 January 1965. 70. See Jacobs, The UFO Controversy…
  • p. 17 …Detail UFO Surveillance," The New York Times, 13 January 1979; Patrick Huyghe, "UFO Files: The Untold…
92. See John Diamond, "Air Force Probes 1947 UFO Claim Findings Are Down to Earth," 9 September 1994, Associated Press release; William J. Broad, "Wreckage of a 'Spaceship': Of This Earth (and U.S.)," The New York Times, 18 September 1994, p. 1; and USAF Col. Richard L. Weaver and 1st Lt. James McAndrew, The Roswell Report, Fact Versus Fiction in New Mexico Desert (Washington, DC: GPO, 1995).

93. See Good, Above Top Secret; Moore and S. T. Friedman, "Philip Klass and MJ-12: What are the Facts," (Burbank California: Fair-Witness Project, 1988), Publication Number 1290; Klass, "New Evidence of MJ-12 Hoax," Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 14 (Winter 1990); and Moore and Jaime H. Shandera, The MJ-12 Documents: An Analytical Report (Burbank, California: Fair-Witness Project, 1990), Publication Number 1500. Walter Bedell Smith supposedly replaced Forrestal on 1 August 1950 following Forrestal's death. All members listed were deceased when the MJ-12 "documents" surfaced in 1984. See Peebles, Watch the Skies, pp. 258-268.

Dr. Larry Bland, editor of The George C. Marshall Papers, discovered that one of the so-called Majestic-12 documents was a complete fraud. It contained the exact same language as a letter from Marshall to Presidential candidate Thomas Dewey regarding the "Magic" intercepts in 1944. The dates and names had been altered and "Magic" changed to "Majic." Moreover, it was a photocopy, not an original. No original MJ-12 documents have ever surfaced. Telephone conversation between the author and Bland, 29 August 1994.

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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 18 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.