Documents / Official release

Congressional, White House, UFO-related Constituent Correspondence, 1998

U.S. Government · 1998 · 86 pages · text from the file's own layer

This 1998 NASA file holds UFO-related letters from constituents that were forwarded by members of Congress, together with NASA's handling records. Senator Olympia Snowe forwarded letters from Maine residents, including a 12-year-old who asked for Roswell documents and listed a number of reported sightings. Senator Charles Grassley forwarded a question about astronaut UFO sightings. NASA's reply says it has no UFO program and has not withheld anything. The reply enclosed a NASA fact sheet and James Oberg's article, which explains the Gemini-4 McDivitt object as the spacecraft's own booster.

From the source: Release of 2026-06-12 Released with redactions. This collection of documents, primarily from 1998, contains draft and final correspondence from the White House and the offices of members of Congress responding to constituent inquiries about Unidentified Flying Objects, or “UFOs.” These inquiries cover a diverse range of topics, including alleged UFO sightings by NASA astronauts, questions regarding the authenticity of photos collected during U.S. missions to Mars, alleged improper withholding of information by the U.S. Government, questions regarding the appropriateness of “UFO-related” governmental spending, and calls for congressional hearings regarding the nature and existence of “UFOs.” The official responses consistently state that, circa 1998, the U.S. Government is not aware of evidence supporting the existence of extraterrestrial technology, and that NASA does not actively investigate “UFOs.” The collection includes references to materials of both confirmed and unconfirmed authenticity, as provided by constituents, as well as references to historical, scientific literature addressing specific “UFO” sighting claims.

,
<
l
;
f
1
I
. , .
• . ' ..· :;:·..
r · .•
.....
t,
' ,
~
~· ~--.·-, .·. ~ . ~. :.\..®.
Geminl-11 photo of Proton-3 (arrow) i nd extreme enlargement of image. UFO magazines often pront funv blobs without indicating
that object w a s h ighly magnified. f; llrn ertlf,icts cause "blobblneu". NASA photo S-66-54661 .
Let's take a moment to look at the
Apollo--12 flight more ca·re(ully. It
probably rates as one of the most
"UFO-ridden" space flights ever made,
and ·probably did more than any
Apollo mission to encourage the
stories o( astronaut sightings of UFOs.
. What lies behind all these stories? Who
started them? What is the "official"
NASA position?
Apollo-12 was launched on
November 1-l, 1969, on the second
m oon landing m1ss1on. The crew
co;'ISisted o( Gcmini-11 veterans
"Pete" Conrad and Richard Gordon,
and space rookie Alan Dean (Conrad
had also nown into space on
Gemini-5.) Taking off during a
thunderstorm, t he craft was twice hit
by lightning which threatened to
abort the mission.·
Instead, the night proceeded
successfully to t he first pinpoint moon
landing fou r days later. Astronauts
Conrad and Bean flew their Luna.r
Module in to a precision to uchdown
near the Surveyor-3 automatic moon
probe. During a scheduled moon walk,
the men retrieved samples from the
robot crnft. The return on Eanh was
"routine", if f?ights to the moon can
ever be considered routine.
49
On the outbound leg, Conrad had
radioed to Earth that the Apollo was
"being followed". This message, trans
mitted over the open radio link, was
heard by hundreds of newsmen and by
millions of Americans. It im:nediately
gave rise to new UFO stories.
According to the account best
known to UFO believers (publishe d in
Saga magazine, May 1970, entit led
" Apollo l 2's ~Jysterious Encounter
with Flying Sauct'rs", written by T.G.
Beckley and H. Salkinl. the astro nau~,;
watched Lwo nashing lights near ch~ir
Command Module about 150,000
miles out from Earth. At first, the

Cases discussed

About this file

Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 86 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.