Documents / FOIA release
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.
“The Unexplained Files”1 page
Approved for Release: 2025/06/11 C07083374 -éé BLUE BOOK investigators were able to attribute many ' UFO sightings to U-2 claims that German engineers held by r - the Soviets were developing a “flying _ flights‘ saucer" as a fiirure weapon oFwar.‘° To most US political and military leaders, the Soviet Union by the mid- l9S0s had become a dangerous oppo- nent. Soviet progress in nuclear the Assistant Director of O51, wrote “’“P°‘“ md 5“ld¢d ml‘-ill“ ‘"35 Par’ that the objects observed probably » ‘la-ll"lY 1i"ml“S- ll‘ El" summfl QE were normal jet aircraft in a steep 1949, the USSR had detonated an dimbfz atomic bomb. In August I955. only- nine months after the United States tested a hydrogen bomb, the Sovicm Wilton E. Lexow, head oFthe ClA's Applied Sciences Division. was also detonated one. In the spring of . skcpdG1‘ He quesdoncdwhy the l9$3. 2 top secret RAN D Corpora- tion study also pointed out the vulnerability of SAC bases to a sur- prise attack by Soviet long-range bombers. Concern overdue danger of a Soviet attack on the United Scares continued to grow, and UFO sightings added to_r.hc uneasiness of US policymakers.‘ ' Mounting reports of UFO: over cast- ero Europe and Afghanistan also prompted concern that the Soviets were making rapid progress in this area. CIA ofiicials knew that the British and Canadians were already experimenting with "flying saucers." Project Ywas a Canadian-British-US developmental operation to produce a nonconvenrional Flying-saucer~type aircmlr, and Agency officials Feared the Soviets were testing similar devices.“ Adding to the concern was 1 flying saucer sighting by US Senator Richard Russell and his parry while traveling on a train in the USSR in October 1955. Alier extensive inter- views of Russell and his group.“ however, CIA ofiicials concluded that Russell's sighting did not sup- port the theory that the Soviets had Cltvtloped saucerlike or unconven- rlr;nal..iiF-znft. Herbert Scovillc, lr., 1 Soviets were continuing to develop conventional-type aircraft if they had a “flying saucer.“-‘ Scovillc asked Lexow to assume responsibility for Bally assessing the capabilities and limitations of rxonconventional air- crai-'r and to maintain the OSI central file on the subject of UFOs. CIA's U-2 and OXCART as UFOs in November 1954. CIA had entered into the world of high technology with its U-2 overhead reconnaissance project. Worldng with i..ocltheed’s Advanced Development Facility in Burbank. California, known is the Skunk Works, and Kelly johnson, an eminent aeronautical engineer, the Agency by August I955 was testing a high-altitude experimental aircraft- rhe U-2. Ir could fly at 60,000 feet; in the mid-1950:, most commercial airliners flew between l0,000 Feet and 20,000 Feet. Consequently, once the U-2 started rest flights. com- mercial pilocs and air traliic controllers began reporting a large increase in UFO sightings.“ (U) The early U-2s were silver (they were later painted black) and reflected the rays From the sun, especially at sun-~ UFOs rise and sunset. They oFren appeared as fiery objects to observers below. Air Force BLUE BOOK investiga- tors aware of the secret U-2 Flights tried to explain away such sightings by linking them tojnatural phenom- ena such as ice crystals and temperature inversions. By checking with the Agency’: U-2 Project Scat? in Wuhington. BLUE BOOK inves- tigators were able to attribute many UFO sightings to U-2 flights. They were careful, however, not to reveal the true cause of the sighting to the public. According to later estimates From CIA officials who worked on the U- 2 project and the OXCART (SR-71, or Blackbird) project, over half of all UFO reports From the late 19505 through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the United States." This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive gate- rnents to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraor- dinarily scnsirivc national security project. While perhaps justified, this deception added Fuel to the later con- spiracy theories and the coverup controversy of the 1970s. The per- centage of what the Air Force considered unexplained UFO sight- ings Fell to 5.9 percent in 1955 and to 4 percent in 1956.“ Ar the same time, pressure was build- ing For the release of the Robertson panel report on UFOs. In 1956. Edward Ruppelr, Former head of the Air Force BLUE BOOK project, -publicly revealed the existence of the panel. A best-selling book by UFOl- ogisr Donald Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps major, advocated release of all government informa- ripnlrelating to UFOs. Civilian ‘-UP-O»groéips¢such'as the National?’ 73 Approved for Release: 2025/06/11 C07083374 ,,..» s.
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.