Documents / FOIA release
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.
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Memorandum for the D/CI Subject: Air Force Request to Declassify CIA Material on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) 1. The following is a brief review of events pertinent to the subject matter. 2. In 1953 OSI convened a panel of scientists to consider reports on unidentified flying objects and to advise us on the potential threat to national security. This resulted in a report classified "secret." 3. In 1957 following some publicity on CIA involvement in the UFO problem, the USAF requested and obtained an unclassified version of the conclusions of the 1953 report. That version avoided mentioning CIA involvement. (See attachment A) 5. On 12 July 1966 USAF again requested declassification of the 1953 report. (See attachment B) Prior publicity was given as justification for downgrading. 6. In as much as a sanitized version of the 1953 report had been released to the Air Force in 1957, we requested clarification in a meeting with an Air Force representative on 19 July. (See attachment C) During this meeting the Air Force representative showed us a USAF copy of the 1953 CIA report. It was stamped unclassified, indicating that the classification had been changed sometime prior to 19 July. 7. A new request dated 27 July was prepared by USAF. (See attachment D)
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.