Documents / FOIA release

Air Force Request to Declassify CIA Material on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO)

Central Intelligence Agency · 2001-04-30 · 53 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This Central Intelligence Agency release, approved in 2004, collects 1966 memoranda on Air Force requests to declassify the 1953 report of the scientific panel on unidentified flying objects that the Office of Scientific Intelligence convened. The memos trace the USAF requests of July 1966, the press interest behind them, and the 15 August forwarding of a sanitized version with CIA references removed. The attached panel comments found no threat to national security, judged the Tremonton film to probably show birds, and recommended a training and debunking program.

  • p. 13 …The writings of Charles Fort were referenced to show that "strange things in the sky" had…
  • p. 32 …The writings of Charles Fort were referenced to show

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

1944 there was material evidence of the existence of "hardware" obtained from crashed vehicles in Sweden. This evidence gave the investigating team a basis upon which to operate. The absence of any "hardware" resulting from unexplained UFO sightings lends a "will-of-the-wisp" nature to the problem. The results of the investigation, to date, strongly indicate that no evidence of hostile act or danger exists. Furthermore, the current reporting system would have little value in the case of detection of enemy attack by conventional aircraft or guided missiles; under such conditions "hardware" would be available almost at once.

## Artifacts of Extraterrestial Origin.

It was interesting to note that none of the members of the Panel were loath to accept that this earth might be visited by extraterrestrial intelligence beings of some sort, some day. What they did not find was any evidence that related the objects sighted to space travelers. One of the Panel members, in his presentation, showed how he had eliminated each of the known and probable causes of sightings leaving him "extra-terrestrial" as the only one remaining in many cases. His background as an aeronautical engineer and technical intelligence officer could not be slighted. However, the Panel could not accept any of

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