Documents / FOIA release
This airgram, released by the National Security Agency and sent from the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo, reports a visit from Ismael Reyes Febles, an amateur astronomer who runs the private Antares Observatory. He showed an Embassy Officer twenty color slides of the November 12 solar eclipse, and a saucer-like object appears in each one. Reyes offered them to a U.S. scientific agency and seemed to expect payment. Uruguayan scientists told the Embassy he has no standing in the scientific community, but the officer thought the slides might show a real aerial phenomenon.
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# AIRGRAM 1. The Embassy has been visited by a local amateur astronomer who is rather well known in Montevideo for his long-range weather forecasts which are frequently referred to in the local press. The astronomer, Ismael REYES Febles, is director of a private observatory which he calls Antares Observatory. Reyes showed an Embassy Officer twenty color slides of the November 12 eclipse of the sun in each of which a saucer-like object was visible in the foreground in various positions throughout the cycle of the slides taken during the two-hour duration of the eclipse. Reyes said he has not shown the slides to anyone else yet and wishes to offer them to a suitable scientific agency of the United States Government. Although he mentions no price, his manner indicates that he expects remuneration other than scientific fame. The Embassy Officer who spoke to Reyes told him that there was no one in the Country team qualified to make even a preliminary assessment of the slides but that he would bring the matter to the attention of the Scientific Attache in Buenos Aires. Reyes accepted this suggestion and said he would keep his slides secret for a reasonable period of time until he bears from the Embassy. 2. The Embassy has checked with the scientific community in Uruguay in an attempt to establish Reyes' reputation with his colleagues. The Chairman of the Astronomy Department at the University of the Republic and other reputable local scientists have reported that Reyes has no university training and is completely without standing in the scientific community. Localists are generally skeptical of his work and his motives. 3. Despite the unfavorable report the Embassy has received on Reyes, the Embassy Officer who viewed the slides believes that either Reyes has indeed photographed an interesting nerial phenomenon which cannot bo
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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. 1 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.