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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..-V--~~..,,......,,,.,,,,,,~~~..... ___ ~ _ ••· .. ,.~~to,~J,._ally done so are either
misconceptions. mi; repn•s1•ntalions. o r
frauds on the part of L: FO writers.
Yt>t another cast: in poi!lt has just
bt>en given, and it deals with the J ohn
Young quotation. Young, in Seattle in
1973, said that the chances were good
that there were in tell igen t civilizatio ns
on other planets (AP, Nov. 27, 1973).
The newsman started the article with
the lead, "John Young says that the
odds are that unidentiiied Flying
Objects do exi$t'', even though none
of Young's quoted words indicated
that at all. Beforr. you could say
"UFO tlap·•. th~ l.iFO writers had a
new authority :
John Yo ung says, " Odds are UFOs
exist".
It seems clear that astronauts as a
class or the population do not possess
any special knowledge about CFO:;
which they may have gained from
their own experiences. They are about
as well informed (or more truthfully.
as badly misinformed) as the anirage
citizen. To quote them as above with
the sugiiestion that they are special
authoritit>s on UFOs is a misleading
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