Documents / FOIA release

Ufos--What Are They?

Central Intelligence Agency · 2013-06-24 · 8 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This CIA release, dated 2013-06-24, is an English translation of "UFOs: What Are They?", an article by F. Yu. Zigel' printed in the Soviet magazine Smena in February 1967. Zigel' reviews reported sightings, including the Mantell crash, Clyde Tombaugh's 1949 observation, Antarctic station reports and radar detections. He then weighs five explanations: hoaxes, optical illusions, secret aircraft, an unknown natural phenomenon and craft from other planets. He concludes that no hypothesis is final and that the phenomenon calls for careful scientific study.

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the air. In the opinion of British specialists the possibility of an optical illusion is practically excluded.

Fourth Explanation.

The UFO is an unknown natural phenomenon. The material world which surrounds us is endlessly diverse and complex. There is no doubt but what the non-understood phenomena of nature are immeasurably more numerous than those which have been studied and understood. Perhaps UFOs represent something new and unprecedented just as, let us say, radioactivity was to us at the end of the last century?

This position is unquestionably worthy of attention. It is a stimulus to the study of UFOs, and this is its greatest value today. Recently there was a report of a hypothesis to the effect that an UFO is plasma consisting of ionized particles of air and charged dust particles. The plasma hypothesis, clearly would explain the fluctuations of the magnetic needle of a compass upon the appearance of an UFO, and also the fact that persons who have seen UFOs have noted also the irritation of their eyes as though under the effect of ultraviolet light. But this new hypothesis can hardly be a full explanation of UFOs. You see, there are cases of UFO observations in clear weather also, when there were no electrical particles and plasma in the atmosphere. The shapes of UFOs, their strange movements, their many-colored illumination are in no way similar to the behavior of natural clusters of plasma.

Figures 4. & 5. These photographs were taken near Namur (Belgium) on 4 June 1955. The man who took them noted a grayish-colored object glistening in the sun and approaching at great speed but then suddenly slowing down. At that moment the first picture (Figure 4) was taken.

When the object had stopped a cloud of steam appeared around it. Then it raised itself above this cloudy patch, speeded up and quickly disappeared completely. Experts have concluded that the mysterious object was at an altitude of not less than 1,500 meters and that it had a diameter of at least 12 meters.

Cases discussed

About this file

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. 8 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.