Documents / FOIA release
This is a declaration by Delores M. Nelson, the CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator, dated October 26, 2009. She filed it in support of the CIA's motion for summary judgment in Larry W. Bryant v. CIA, a FOIA suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Bryant had sought records of a 1987 FAA meeting about the November 17, 1986 Japanese flight 1628 encounter over Alaska. The declaration describes the agency's searches, which found no records of the meeting and three documents from other agencies about later airborne UFO encounters.
“Headquarters”4 pages
Approved for Release: 2025/06/10 C07083377 The CIA processed Plaintiff’s request following the procedures set forth above. As noted above (‘][ 9), the CIA has previously searched for and released records relating to UFOs in response to FOLA requests and litigation. In addition, in 1993-94, at the direction of then Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) James Woolsey, the CLA 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 Intelligence (“DCI”) resulted in Ha 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 information 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, 1986...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 which prompted the CIA to reopen the processing of his request, namely, the request for information “on all other similar cases of airborne 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 information on UFOs. However, the letter also acknowledged that occasionally we may receive reports of sightings of objects in the UFO category. Accordingly, a search was conducted by CIA for records concerning “similar cases of airborne UFO encounters” since November 17, 1986. And, 12 Approved for Release: 2025/06/10 C07083377
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 16 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.