Documents / FOIA release
This CIA-released foreign broadcast report, dated November 2, 1954 and declassified in 2013, summarizes an October 30, 1954 Hungarian Home Service radio interview on flying saucers with Professor Jozsef Oveges and journalists Gomori and Tibor Peto. Oveges argued saucers could be neither earthly rockets nor probable spaceships, attributing sightings to atmospheric effects and a recent meteor over Hungary. Gomori and Peto described the saucer stories as mass hysteria organized for political purposes by imperialist forces.
“Hill”1 page
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HUNGARY Nov. 2, 1954 NATURAL LAW, POLITICS EXPLAIN SAUCERS Budapest, Hungarian Home Service, Oct. 30, 1954, 1900 GMT--L (Interview with Prof. Jozsef Oveges and Journalists Gomori and Tibor Peto on Flying Saucers) (Editorial Report) Prof. Oveges said: "The legend of the flying saucers cropped up after the war, when they were described as a secret weapon. According to another opinion the flying saucer was a spaceship coming from another planet--usually Mars--carrying normal beings. What is the opinion of (scientists) about this? "Is it possible that the flying saucer is a rocket launched from the earth? It is true that experiments with rocket weapons are being made and that results have been attained, but for such a distance and in such small dimensions as are said of the flying saucer, one could (launch) a rocket only with atomic energy. Today it is still a technical impossibility to use atomic energy for jet propulsion. It is therefore impossible that the flying saucer phenomenon is a rocket of earthly origin. "Is it possible that the saucer is a spaceship coming from another planet? Theoretically it is not impossible at all to create a spaceship with the use of atomic energy. Therefore, theoretically it is also possible that the inhabitants of another planet could reach our globe. Is it probable that this did in fact happen? On no account. Had they really descended on earth, as was believed on a great many occasions, would not they have left some lasting trace of their visit? Is it not a rather curious coincidence that these legends emerged at a time when atomic energy was discovered? "Let us assume that many trustworthy people did see something like a saucer flying in the air. What can be the explanation? Situations may occur in the atmosphere in which luminous patches, stationary or moving, appear. With a pinch of imagination these can be taken for saucers--for instance the light of a car-reflector moving up a hill, some other mirage-like reflection, or the passing of dark clouds beneath illuminated clouds. The ordinary meteor which passed over Hungary a few days ago added fuel to such stories of flying saucers. Bigger and more splended meteors had been seen in the past, but in those days the person who described them as flying saucers or a spaceship would have been ridiculed." Gomori wanted to speak about the political aspect of the question, and wondered why these stories have come up now and so fitfully. "There are situations in which imperialism, the forces of war, need mass hysteria."
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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. 2 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.