Documents / FOIA release

Photo Analysis of UFO Photography

Central Intelligence Agency · 2013-06-26 · 3 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This is a secret memorandum dated 17 February 1967 from the Chief of the Technical Intelligence Division to the Director of the National Photographic Interpretation Center. The CIA approved it for release in 2013. It reports a photo analysis of Polaroid pictures of an alleged UFO taken on the shore of Lake St. Clair, Michigan, which were supplied by the Air Force's Aerial Phenomena Office at Wright-Patterson AFB. It estimates the object's size from stated assumptions but calls the results inconclusive and says it found no definite evidence of a hoax.

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

CFO

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2013/09/18 : CIA-RDP79B00752A000300100005-0

SUBJECT: Photo Analysis of UFO Photography

6. In conclusion, it should be noted that all of the information contained in this memorandum deals with quantitative or dimensional information obtained from calculations based upon a large number of assumptions. The qualitative or subjective analysis of the imagery is not treated because of a lack of background knowledge on UFO imagery. This office cannot shed any light on the authenticity of this alleged UFO from this photo analysis. There is no definite evidence that this photography is a hoax. On the other hand, for one to assume that this object is a UFO is equally as dangerous. There are too many unanswered questions to label the probable cause of this sighting as anything but undeterminable. For example the degraded image quality of the helicopter when compared with the UFO is suspect when considered that the helicopter was closer to camera station when photographed. Likewise, the crispness of the edge gradient of the black band on the UFO is good considering the distance at which the object was photographed. Also, the fact that the tail section of the UFO was photographed in each case with the same cross section exposed casts some suspicion on the authenticity of the UFO. However, each of the above facts can be explained by various reasons and because of these reasons the photo analysis of this UFO.photograph has resulted in inconclusive answers.

Chief, Technical Intelligence Division

50X1

Distribution:

Orig. + 1 - NPIC/O/Dir

2 - NPIC/TID/PB

2 - NPIC/TID

## SECRET

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