Scientists Refute Claims of 'UFO' Sightings

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

# Approved For Release 2005/06/29 : CIA-RDP81R00560R000100010014-6

6 March 1968

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The second category comprises reports of phenomena seen by different individuals: "I was swimming in the sea and a 'flying saucer' flew down to me, hung suspended in midair, and then flew off..." Clearly, information of this sort has no scientific value whatever since it can neither be verified nor corroborated and it is altogether impossible to establish the degree of its authenticity. This is why conclusions deduced from this kind of information have not the slightest scientific significance.

Finally, to the third category may be relegated genuine observations of phenomena of various kinds which have been made, generally speaking, by people unfamiliar with science. A typical example were the reports printed in the Bulgarian press about the appearance of a luminous object above Sofia. This strange object resembled a balloon or a parachute which moved at an approximate altitude of 30 kilometers in a direction perpendicular to the wind; its outlines and colors changed all the time. If similar reports have been made once they have been made a thousand times, but whenever they have been checked there has always been a perfectly natural explanation for them. Even the object that was spotted over Sofia was not "unidentified." In fact it was nothing other than a gigantic spy sounding balloon which had been released by one of NATO's intelligence centers. Being at a great height, it was entirely feasible that it should proceed "against the wind." After all, it is common knowledge that the direction of the wind in the atmosphere's upper strata often does not coincide with the way the wind blows just above the earth's surface. As for the color changes and the fluctuating contours of the sounding balloon when seen from the earth, as the Bulgarian astronomer Bogomil Kovachev so rightly remarked, these were only the optical effects arising at sunset.

Just imagine for a moment that our astronomers have carried out a routine launching of the astonomical station described in some detail not so long ago in PRAVDA. A polyethylene balloon having a capacity of more than 100,000 cubic meters has lifted a sun telescope and goodness knows what other intricate astronomical apparatus to an altitude of 20 kilometers plus. Observers on the earth, who happen to be in direct line of the station's flight, see a peculiar object flashing in the skies. Once the propagandists have laid hands on the reports about these observations of "unidentified flying objects" this is one-upmanship. As there is not a single specialist in their midst who has any inkling of the scientists' astronomical program they will treat this object, which has indeed been seen by everyone and his wife, as a "typical representative of an unidentified flying object."

The fact is that nobody has produced any new facts which can successfully support the theory of "flying saucers." If astronomers searching the skies day in and day out cannot see them, who can? Scientists examining the state of the terrestial atmosphere have not encountered them. Neither, for that matter, have the country's PVO units picked them out. So this means that there is no justification for resurrecting ludicrous, long buried rumors about some sort of secret excursions made to our planet by Martians or the inhabitants of Venus.

Exactly the same conclusions were reached not long ago by U.S. scientists. In the course of two decades they have chacked the veracity of 11,000, more or less reliable reports about the sighting of "flying saucers", and are fully convinced that there is not a grain of proof in the existence of such objects.