Documents / FOIA release

Flying Saucers UFO Reports

Central Intelligence Agency · 2001-03-12 · 68 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This CIA release, approved in 2001, contains Flying Saucers UFO Reports No. 1, a magazine that Dell Publishing issued in 1967. It argues that UFOs deserve serious study. It gathers reported landings, radar trackings, sightings by astronomers and pilots, and cases involving creatures, drawing on Ruppelt, Keyhoe, Fuller, NICAP and APRO. It also describes Project Blue Book, NICAP, APRO and the new University of Colorado study under Dr. Edward Condon.

  • p. 33 …UFO; an encounter officially recorded with the Air Force Project Blue Book, in NICAP's extensive…

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

# Approved For Release 2001/04/02 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100010002-9

tracked an unidentified object with theodolite near White Sands. It was in New Mexico that the well known astronomer Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto, made his sighting of the unidentified rectangles in 1949 and dozens of gyrating discs were seen by a retired Army captain in Farmington on March 17, 1950. In July of 1951 a photographer took 200 feet of film of a UFO spotted near a bomber over White Sands, N.M. The object appeared on radar scope and the developed film showed a round bright spot, but the film has never been released. (The UFO Evidence, NICAP.) There were sightings in 1952; discs changing shape in formation; tracked on radar in 1954 and a more current sighting in which the objects were said to have performed "perfect precise flight maneuvers."

Some of these sightings, witnessed by military men whose training had prepared them to recognize natural phenomena and known aircraft, described their sightings in detail with addenda that seemed to preclude the possibility of constellations, weather balloons, experimental Air Force craft or any of the other explanation on which the Air Force fell back when all else failed. At one open session attended by newsmen and by an Air Force public information officer, the two military policemen who had seen an unidentified object drop from the skies to within 50 feet above a bunker on the White Sand missile range said that its bright light blinked out then flared up again "like the sun" as the object came in again toward the ground, then disappeared. "It looked like a completely controlled landing," one of the witnesses said.

Talk with military men whose job it is to pursue these

unidentified objects, to intercept them, to bring back some account. Ask them if they believe in UFOs. You'll find them reluctant to discuss the subject in most instances; dead set against admitting to them, but unable to deny that there's something there.

At the hearing of the House Armed Services Committee held in April of this year, one of the congressmen asked Dr. Hynek if there "has ever been any evidence in any of these unexplained sightings that would indicate that there is some kind of extraterrestrial intelligence involved."

Hynek's answer: "I have not seen any evidence to confirm this . . . however the possibility should be kept open as a possible hypothesis. I don't think we should ever close our minds to it." (The UFO Investigator, NICAP May June, 1966.)

Dr. Hynek acknowledged that he did not think the Air Force (Project Blue Book) was fully investigating UFO unknowns, and had so advised them. "...enough puzzling sightings have been reported by intelligent and often technically competent people to warrant closer attention than Project Blue Book can possibly encompass." (The UFO Investigator.)

There is heartening evidence that UFOs will be investigated in greater depth in the future with the recent $300,- 000 grant to the University of Colorado earmarked for "independent" investigation. And perhaps one day there will be an answer to the Zamora sighting in Socorro which despite the extensive efforts of private and Air Force sponsored investigators to explain it, remains on the records of Project Blue Book as "unsolved mystery."

Diagram on this and preceding page prepared by Frank Salisbury, Plant Science Department, Utah State University. Here initial sighting of object (X) from position (A). Closer inspection (B) near dynamite shack (Square).

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