Documents / Official release
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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raise specific points not address°'d
in tho study. or to cite and
docum.ant facts which might
modify or invalidate conclusions
in the study.
James E. Oberg
Associate Editor
" Space World" magazine
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Space flight has opened many mysteries. True, scie11tists prefer to list tlie
puzzles solved and u11knoums discovered, but as men venture beyond the
earth it is inevitable that new mysteries will be encountered.
Somewhere out there, many obsen:ers believe, are intelligent species with
technological civilizations · far more advanced tha,z that of Earth. Perhaps
they are sending us radio signals we have not recognized. Perhaps they have
left artifacts of past visits for us to find. Perhaps they are even_ now keeping
the earth under surveillance.
If they are out there, someday we will meet them. As illustrated in science
fiction, this meeting will probably occur in space.
Have such meetings already occurred? Have astronauts and cosmonauts
already seen alien spacecraft? The UFO lite!ature is full of tales of "space
UFOs". Are any ofthem valid? What can a careful study reveal?
H ardly a UFO book or movie is
complete without the standard
assertion that "astronauts have seen
UFOs too". While critics may attack
the character or intelligence of many
UFO witnesses, they cannot use these
tactics on American and Russian space
pilots. Where UFO photographs can be
accused of distortion and forgery,
photographs taken by astronauts and
processed by NASA must be of the
highest trustworthiness. Hence, most
UFO scholars consider the family of
astronaut UFO sightings to be one of
the strongest bodi~s of evidence in the
past thirty years.
The best of these cases include
astronaut James McOivitt's sighting of
o( an "unidentified spacecraft" near
his Gemini-4 space capsule in 1965, a
curious photo of a pair of UFOs with
glowing propulsion fields taken by the
Gemini-7 astronauts. reports of nearby
objects from X-15 and Mercury
spacecraft. tales of how ~he 1968-1969
Apollo moon shots were followed by
U.FOs on their way to the moon, and
reports and pbutographs of objects
seen by crewmen on the Skylab space
station. Last year, the National Inves-
tigations Committee on A erial
Phenomena (NICAP) selected the
"McDivitt UFO" photo as one of the
four best photographs ever taken.
The "astronaut UFO" sightings
must appeal to many seriou:i
researchers for a number of reasons.
The witnesses and the photographs are
unimpeachable as to honesty and
authenticity. The conditions of the
space missions can be calculated and
recorded, and every object near the
spacecraft can be determined by con
sulting the giant space radars of the
North American Air Defense
Command (NORAD), headquartered
inside Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado.
Extensive crew debriefings and
on-board tape recorder transcripts may
be available to obtain direct eye
witness testimony.
With all these facts and assumptions
in mind, and mindful of the nume rous
'unsolved' cases which might tell much
about the lJFO phenomenon, I began
a special research program into this
particular body of evidence. As an
aerospace writer. historian, and re
searcher, I felt that my experience
with astronautics, computers, Air
Force operations, and space miss:ons
might give me new insights into this
most puzzling series of cases. I was not
disappointed, and my results were
startling.
The basic truths behind these
sightings seems lately to have gathered
an accretion of exaggeration,
confusion, and outright fiction. The
1968 "Condon Report" on UFOs
(conducted by the University of
Colorado for the U.S. Air Force)
found itself unable to penetrate three
specific cases, which the analyst felt
were •a "challenge" to any serious
investigator. Stories later began
circulating about sightings of lunar
surface lights and structures, and the
discovery of artifacts on the moon,
about near approaches of structured
objects, and about attempts at radio
contact between Apollo capsules and
UFOs. Recent books on UFOs give
lists of astronaut sightings which are
out of numeric sequence, misdated,
mispeUed, and otherwise distorted.
My research has revealed a few
examples of deliberate photo forgeries
by UFO buffs or opportunistic authors.
My investigations in the NASA
38 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.