NASA FOIA 21-HQ-F-00500

Background on the Keck,burg Incident
An object landed in the tiny town of Kccksburg, PA on December 9, 1965. It was
observed as a neeball in the sky across several U.S. states and Canada. Four witnesses
have provided independent, corroborated descriptions of the object and its location in the
Kecksburg woods. Dozens of others - including fire fighters , newspaper reporters, and a
news director at radio station WHJB who was on the scene taping interviews - describe
the military presence at the crash site, the cordoning ofT of the area, and the retrieval of
an object transported by an anny truck. Many witnesses have provided signed affidavits
for investigator Stan Gordon, who has been working on the case for over three decades.
(For more infonnation, see Gordon's website at hnp:Uwww.westQl.cQm/-paufo.)
At the scene, officials told residents that a meteor crashed. The next day, the U.S.
Government declared that nothing fell that night and nothing was found. This is the
official U.S. Government position. However, witness reports and newspaper articles at
the time clearly establish that something fell and that it maneuvered in the sky before
impact. In aU likelihood, the object was either a highly advanced space probe or an
unknown object from outer space.
The files of Project Blue Book, the official Air Force investigation into UFOs terminatcd
in 1969, state that no space debris entered our atmosphere that day. "Aluminum type"
fragments were retrieved in Michigan and sent to Project Dlue Dook. (Where are they
nQw?) A Blue Book memo says that no object was found in Pennsylvania. (Blue Book
only had a "Secret" clearance and had the rQle of reponing information to the public; it is
likely that the retrieval of this object was classified higher than Secret and thus Blue
BQok may not have been infonned.)
A Russian space probe, Cosmos 96, malfunctioned on the same day as the Kecksburg
Qbject, and this has been suggested by some as a plausible explanation. However, data
provided by the US Space Conunand shows that Cosmos 96 came down over Canada at
3: 18 am; the crash in Kecksburg occurred at approximately 4:45 pm . Orbital coordinates
obtained from the Goddard Space Center also prove that Cosmos 96 did not come down
in Kecksburg. The Russian Space Agency (equivalent of our NASA) stated that it could
make no correlation between Cosmos 96 and the incident at Kccksburg. The Russian
Embassy also stated that there is no proof that any Soviet spacecraft landed in Kecksburg.
In addition, witness descriptions of the object do not fit the size or other characteristics of
Cosmos 96 or possible debris from it, as far as we know.
No matter what it is, the issue here is the public's right to information, especially 37 years
after the incident.