Documents / FOIA release

UFO's and the Intelligence Community Blind Spot to Surprise or Deceptive Data

National Security Agency · 7 pages · text from the file's own layer

This undated National Security Agency paper, released by the NSA in 2017 under a Mandatory Declassification Review, argues that people's reactions to UFO sightings expose an intelligence community weakness: analysts cannot process surprising or deceptive data objectively. Citing Dr. Jacques Vallee, it describes how the mind reacts with shock and imaginative distortion as observations grow stranger. It recommends selecting and training analysts for special surprise alert teams. An appendix lists historical military defeats blamed on blindness to surprise.

Doc ID: 6577932
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(2) The' pe°i-sonal pt:,cn·o1oeical · stru.c·ture will collapse
and the mind will reach down into its deecP!:t.nl.ace '-'here 11thRt which
cannot be destroy-ed" is:..and it will e·banc�n i·t�elf to this entity f'or
survival protection. Encounter with. this char.geless indcstruc:.eble
entity is usually referred to as e religious experience. In the
. confusion and the. shock, this expe.rience is often attributed to the
shocking event or object and that is why pri;nat"j'\·e peoples. worship such
bizzare things as airplanes or cj.garette lighters. • .
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f'�-/The deBTec of strangne�s of the phenomena dictates·how
rr.any peo.Jlle the mind i� �illing and r.ble.to tell the event to. A
mildly ll:nusu3l or zhcc:k::ng event ,,,ill ce to:!.c. to cony.people. · A
very shocking event of high strirneness "'ill'· be told to fev people or
practically n::>ne at all. Occasionally the event is so sho�ki:.:gly·._-.
�nusual that it .isn't even reported to tbe person's conscious mind -
but. is buried in ·i,he unconscious of the p�:;:-:;:">r,* �..·here it :::.s only
acces:Jiblc to hy�:1osis or ·c�ri:!'u·1 level sjx Cv7:".i:1unicati�� �he.ring.. :
with another person. (See C'nert_ B.) _.·�
example: Within the past few years a young Air Fore ,-....::=:=====:::::::::::::::;-,
was er.gaged in first lcve.l traffic enalysis end i cept
Soviet Bloc·- coun.tries when_ tlie :follo·,.i •6 took place:
of' a high · ·.·
It occasionally
b. airn;an noticed
that e_veryone w 1nore ec.gy and silent than usual. said even the
chatter was ing treated ·as Top Secret and �hen he ask
on some the data he got aggressive and· ·aistract.ed·.�spon
ainn 'Was impressed with the change that,,th1G, 0new data · ,-seeD:-e�;._:t_q .. ,.....
sing in people. (See Appendix !'or other-·e-x?.t�les :Ot··t1�e··ef".fe�-=-.::..:::t-..:;·--.·
blinciness to surprise r::aterial.) .- :r · · . .:··��"' ..........:::::::::::��
4. Conclusions and Recom.uendetions. It is apparent that we·,
cannot allow such a hll!r.an flaw to leave us blinded to unusual or
surprising material. T'ne example indicates that some_people are less
affected by strange pheno�e�a than others;though still frightened -by
it,they remain capable of reporting it with a fair degree of objectivity.
To solve this pro�lem I recommend the following:
to be abl · th unusual
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FOIA release, from the nsa collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 7 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.