Documents / FOIA release
This unclassified Department of State airgram, drafted by First Secretary of Embassy C. A. Squire in March 1968 and held in NSA files, forwards a Moskovskiy Komsomolets article of February 16, 1968 by Novosti science commentator Villen Lyustiberg. The article says flying saucers do not exist. It attributes the Mantell death to a Navy balloon and calls Adamski a fraud. It argues that Western businessmen and statesmen use saucer stories to distract the public. The embassy notes that the article contradicts earlier Soviet coverage.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
Nowhere in the world is there EVEN ONE trustworthy storeosoopio photograph making it possible to trace from two points simultaneously the outlines of a solid flying object clearly. All photographs that exist have been made with single lens cameras and always leave a margin for doubt. Are there photographs which evoke no doubts whatsoever? Yes, there are. They always show shining objects of a circular or oval shape with vague outlines. Most likely these photographs show ball lightning. Incidentally, the nature of the latter has not been fully elucidated yet either, due to the vagueness of the place and time of its formation. However, no one ever thought of ascribing a cosmic origin to it. Even with a superficial analysis, mysterious flares on clouds proved to be reflections of electric welding, warning lights of airplanes in the area of airports, or distant summer lightning. And the November 1967 "saucer" over Sofia proved to be a high-altitude NATO reconnaissance balloon. A series of suoh photographs amazingly resembles a straw hat with a black silk ribbon, thrown into the air. Others undoubtedly prove to be internegatives obtained from two combined slides, for instance, that of a landscape and that of a strangely designed craft drawn on white paper. Modern photographing techniques allow photographs to be produced which no expert will ever prove to be counterfeit. They are real. But they do not show strangers from space; they show quite ordinary earthly objects uncorrectedly foreshortened pots, pans, plastic toys, and the like. Among the most serious works devoted to an investigation of the problem, there are two which ought to be mentioned. One of them is the book "Flying Saucers" by Donald Menzel who explains almost all cases of their appearance by disturbances in the Earth's or Sun's atmosphere. Our planet travels in the upper layers of the Sun's atmosphere where clots of high-temperature plasma are moving freely. The other is a book by Frank Edwards. It is a collection of statements, notes and records of eye-witness testimony classified into several sections. True, Edwards often qualifies his source as a witness who did not wish to have his name mentioned, but who may be fully trusted, or that the trustworthiness of the witness is confirmed by numerous of his countrymen, but he cannot mention his name so far for a number of reasons. That's not very convincing, is it? ## For Whom Is It Not a Myth? They are those for whom science is a business. Taking advantage of the lively interest of people for everything that is strange and unusual, numerous lecturers in the West appear before audiences with reports and stories, invite eye-witnesses to such lectures, and demonstrate photographs and slices. Most of these lecturers are nothing but ordinary quecks. True, there are people who are sincerely convinced in the truth of what they are talking about. They strive to draw the interest of the public to certain phenomena but, we
FOIA release, from the nsa 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. 5 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.