Documents / FOIA release

Re: Declaration in Bryant V CIA

Central Intelligence Agency · 2010-01-15 · 58 pages · text from the file's own layer

This Central Intelligence Agency filing is a declaration by Delores M. Nelson, the CIA's Information and Privacy Coordinator, in Bryant v. CIA, Civil Action No. 09-0940 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It supports the CIA's motion for summary judgment. It traces Larry W. Bryant's 2008 FOIA request for records of a 1987 FAA meeting on the November 17, 1986 Japanese 747 encounter over Alaska and records of similar airborne UFO encounters. It also describes the fee dispute and the searches the CIA ran. No records of the meeting were found, and three documents from other agencies were referred to them.

Approved for Release: 2025/06/11 C07083374
Documents originated by other govemment agencies are forwarded to those
agencies for direct response to the requester.
C CIA’s Records Search in Response to Plaintiff’s FOIA Request
The CIA processed Plaintiffs request following the procedures set forth above.
As noted above (1[ 9), the CIA has previously searched for and released records
relating to UFOs in response to FOIA requests and litigation. In addition, in
1993-94, at the direction of then Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) James
Woolsey, the CIA conducted an Agency-wide search for and reviewed all CIA
files relating to UFOs. This effort, conducted under the direction of the Executive
Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligenc_e (“DCI”) resulted in a further
release of 1,757 pages, bringing the CIA’s release of documents relating to UFOs,
that is, the “UFO package” to 2,779 pages. It should be noted that this search was
Agency-wide and the intent of the review was to release as much infonnation as
possible, without compromising intelligence sources and methods. Thus, the
subject of plaintiffs request—“a 1987 special meeting at FAA headquarters...to
discuss and evaluate certain official evidence of the intrusive UFO encounter
experienced on Nov. 17, l986...by a Japanese flight crew” over Alaska — falls _
squarely within the parameters of this search. In reviewing this case, it was the
second prong of Plaintiff’ s request that prompted the CIA to reopen the
processing of his request, namely, the request for information “on all other similar
cases of airbome UFO encounters reportedly occurring since Nov. 17, 1986.” As
was explained to Plaintiff in CIA’s Sept. 30, 2008 letter, there is no CIA program
to actively collect infonnation on UFOs. However, the letter also acknowledged
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Approved for Release: 2025/06/11 C07083374

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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 58 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.