Documents / Official release
This Clinton Presidential Library FOIA release (2006-0483-F), filed under Stephen Greer, holds a NASA letter dated July 17, 1996. Laurie Soeder, NASA Associate Administrator for Public Affairs, wrote it in reply to Dr. Steven M. Greer's May 1996 letter to President Clinton. The letter says no government agency investigates UFOs because there is no factual evidence of alien life. It encloses a February 1996 NASA fact sheet that summarizes Project Blue Book's conclusions and lists contacts, including the Air Force Roswell report.
NASA FactsNational Aeronautics and Space Administration Washington, DC 20546 (202) 358-1600 FS -1996-02-017-HQ For Release February 1996 THE US GOVERNMENT AND UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS No branch of the United States Government is currently involved with or responsible for investigations into the possibility of alien life on other planets or for investigating Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO's). The US Air Force (USAF) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have had intermittent, independent investigations of the possibility of alien life on other planets; however, none of these has produced factual evidence that life exists on other planets, nor that UFO's are related to aliens. From 1947 to 1969, the Air Force investigated UFO's; then in 1977, NASA was asked to examine the possibility of resuming UFO investigations_ After studying all of the facts available, it was determined that nothing would be gained by further investigation, since there was an absence of tangible evidence. In October 1992, NASA was directed by Congress to begin a detailed search for artificial radio signals from other civilizations under the NASA Towards Other Planetary Systems (TOPS)/High Resolution Microwave Survey (HRMS) program (also known as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project). Congress directed NASA to end this project in October 1993, citing pressures on the US Federal budget. The HRMS did not detect any confinned signal before it was stopP,ed. However, similar work will continue in a more limited manner through efforts of private groups and through academic institutions. The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI Institute) in Mountain View, CA, effectively replaced the Government project, borrowing the signal processing system from NASA. The SETI Institute is a nonprofit corporation conducting research in a number of fields including all science and technology aspects of astronomy and planetary sciences, chemical evolution, the origin of life, biological evolution, and cultural evolution. During several space missions, NASA astronauts have reported phenomena not immediately explainable; however, in every instance NASA determined that the observations could not be termed "abnormal" in the space environment. The 1947 to 1969 USAF investigations studied UFO's under Project Blue Book. -MORE- REPRODUCED AT GOVT. EXPENSE
Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 5 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.