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

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.

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T wo obiecu drifting out of open hatch (lowe, r ight) of Geminl-12. Both spe_cks are out of focus and hence are within sevoral feet of camera.
-which h ad• very large depth of field. Object on right, in f ocus, i • a scrap of paper. NASA photo S-66-62871.
preceding them all the way." The
origin of that mileage figure is obscure,
but it lends unwarranted authenticity
to the report.
Observatories in Europe also
watc:ied the two UFOs. ether sources
re\'eal. Embellishing the story. another
UFO source claims that "Next day,
the 15th, at 21.15 hours, one bright
revohing light approached the Apollo
12 spacecraft." Fawcett, not to be
outdone, also claims that the
astronauts photographed the UFO (or
UFOs).
One of the loudest proponents of
the Apollo-12 UFO is APRO research
director Or. James Harder. At a UFO
symposium at the University of
California at Santa Cruz on November
8, 1975, Harder claimed that one CFO
"followed Apollo l'.! on three orbits
around the moon". Further, "N,\SA
suppressed the UFO incident~ for fonr
of p,1nic", but Harder was ahle to
discover the si~htin g~ b"cau$e it " was
disclosed by a member of the space
team" who he refused to id1:ntif:: .
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