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Official reports, hearing transcripts, case files and releases: the paper behind the cases. 2,872 documents, 2,610 mirrored with their text, 53,529 pages indexed, so a search reads inside them and lands on the page.
New in the library The PURSUE files The Department of War's UAP release, mirrored in full: the videos, recordings and images, each beside its case file.Documents1,049 records · page 15
This unclassified Central Intelligence Agency message, dated 31 August 1993 in the archive, reports on the 31 August issue of PRAVDA, the first to appear since 23 August after its suspension by Russian presidential decree. It describes the revamped masthead, an address from new chief editor Gennadiy Seleznev pledging centrist positions and independence, a support fund, and coup photographs. A newsdesk notice promises coverage of everything from encounters with flying saucers to interviews with politicians.
This unclassified CIA message, dated 1 September 1993, is a service log for Video Compilation Project 107 that lists Russian television items monitored in late August 1993. The items filed include Novosti and Vesti reports on Arctic shipping, defense conversion, the Moscow air show, train crashes, harvests and troop withdrawals. Among the programs scanned and found negative was a Vladivostok documentary about UFOs broadcast on 31 August. The log contains no UFO reporting beyond that one listing.
This Central Intelligence Agency transcription service record summarizes a Radio Moscow World Service English broadcast aired at 0700 GMT on 3 September 1993. It lists the program's news items, including a Russia-Ukraine summit in the Crimea, the Russian prime minister's visit to the U.S., the founding of the Democratic Initiative Party, and a foiled hijacking attempt in Vladivostok. The final item reports that a scientist from Khabarovsk claimed in a local press article that aliens cause explosions on Earth to power their UFOs.
This Central Intelligence Agency record, dated 10 September 1993, is a program summary of the 1600 GMT Portuguese-language newscast on Rede Globo television in Rio de Janeiro. It lists 16 news items. Most concern the trial of policemen charged with killing street children, the Vigario Geral shantytown, Brazilian economic news and international events. One item describes protests against NASA's alleged hiding of data on UFOs, which the program Globo Reporter was to analyze that night.
This CIA document, released in February 2010, is a program summary of a Rede Globo television newscast broadcast from Rio de Janeiro in Portuguese at 2300 GMT on 17 September 1993. It lists 21 news items with their lengths. The items include a clash between military police and striking teachers in Sao Paulo, new coins, an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, and Paulo Cesar Farias. It also notes a one-minute program reminder about girls abducted by UFOs.
This is an unclassified Central Intelligence Agency press service log dated 7 December 1993. It lists Xinhua English wire items from 6 and 7 December 1993, each with a headline and lead sentence, covering world politics, economics, sports and Chinese domestic news. One Beijing item, headlined "ufos galore across taiwan straits", reports that experts from mainland China and Taiwan said nearly 6,000 UFO sightings had been reported across the Taiwan Straits and that some defied rational explanation.
This Central Intelligence Agency FBIS record, dated 7 December 1993, carries a Xinhua English-language report on the close of a three-day UFO symposium in Beijing. It was the first such meeting attended by both mainland and Taiwan researchers. China UFO Research Organization chairman Wang Changting said more than 5,000 sightings had been reported on the mainland and several hundred in Taiwan, and some could not be explained. About 50 researchers discussed whether UFOs came from remote galaxies or were natural or man-made phenomena.
This is a CIA-distributed transcript of a Moscow Ostankino Television First Channel "Novosti" video report from Saratov, broadcast on 8 December 1993 by Oleg Shommer and Mikhail Goltsev. It covers a unique flying apparatus from the Saratov aviation plant, described as a "flying saucer" that combines wing and fuselage, along with new medical equipment. Mayor Yu. Kitov says only money is lacking. The city has set up an industry committee to prioritize defense conversion programs.
This is a Central Intelligence Agency translation of a Moscow Russian Television Network broadcast from 19 December 1993, taken from the "Russian Aeronauts" program. The report describes Russian stratospheric automated aerostats that carry payloads of several tonnes above 30,000 meters for defense, cosmic ray and international research. It explains how an aerostat probe would explore the Mars atmosphere and surface starting in September 1997. It also shows a Russian "thermoplane" airship, calling it in jest a laboratory for producing UFOs.
This is a Foreign Broadcast Information Service transcript released by the Central Intelligence Agency. It records a Havana Radio Progreso broadcast of 23 December 1993 in which reporter Candido Dominguez describes seeing six or seven bright lights with tails moving north to south over Matanzas City, Cuba, on 21 December for about 30 seconds. Specialists from the Cuban Academy of Sciences also saw them, and meteorologist Orestes Gribao compared the sight to a 1913 photograph taken at the Toronto Observatory.
This CIA FBIS item carries a Kyodo news report dated 7 January 1994. It says the city of Hakui, a Japan Sea coast town in Ishikawa Prefecture, planned to build a three-story UFO study center shaped like an oval UFO within two years. The center's library would give the public access to more than 10,000 official UFO documents, acquired over ten years from sources including the CIA and through Freedom of Information Act requests. City planning employee Josen Takano led the effort.
This is a CIA Foreign Broadcast Information Service translation of a Moscow Ostankino Television Novosti report that aired on 24 January 1994. In the report, Saratov aircraft builders, Yakovlev Design Bureau designers and Central Aerodynamics Institute specialists present their aircraft to potential buyers in Birmingham, England, including a 120-seat Yak airliner and a planned business jet. It also describes a "flying saucer" aircraft being assembled in Saratov that combines wing and fuselage and lands on an air cushion.
This is an unclassified, For Official Use Only video selection list, MOS 94-5065. FBIS London compiled it from the Moscow Ostankino Television First Channel "Novosti" newscast of 24 January 1994, and it is filed as a Central Intelligence Agency record. It lists two items. The first covers Saratov aircraft builders and Yakovlev and Central Aerodynamics Institute designers visiting Birmingham, with footage that includes a "flying saucer" in a hangar. The second covers the Soyuz TM-18 separating from the Mir station and redocking.
This is an unclassified Central Intelligence Agency press selection list dated 23 March 1994. It lists five articles from that day's issue of the Moscow newspaper Rabochaya Tribuna and assigns each one to an analyst office. One item is an article on flying saucers that contains information "from our secret archives" and is marked for full translation. The other items cover a Gazprom equipment deal with Perm defense industries, Finist Bank's gold reserves, and problems in the Ukrainian Navy and at the Sevastopol Naval Institute.
This is a CIA Foreign Broadcast Information Service translation, dated 28 May 1994 and released in May 2000, of a Komsomolskaya Pravda report by Nikolay Yefimovich. It describes two craters 7 to 8 meters across found in a ravine near the Kursk nuclear power station, with no explosion heard, no scattered earth, metal fragments or fire traces, and normal radiation. Civil defense specialists favored a large meteorite, since people had seen a fiery body in the sky, but also raised the possibility of a UFO.
This Central Intelligence Agency conference report, numbered RTT 95-10039 and dated October 1995, presents the proceedings of a conference held 30 September to 1 October 1993. The CIA's Geographic Resources Division sponsored the conference. In it, academic geographers, anthropologists and US Government officials examined ethnic conflict by region, covering Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia and South Asia. The report also discusses what these conflicts mean for US policy. It does not deal with UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena.
This Central Intelligence Agency information report, distributed 8 November 1955, gives a traveler's account of an unconventional flying object seen from a train in the USSR on 4 October 1955. After the train left Alyat, on the way from Baku toward Tiflis, a party member reported seeing a flying saucer. The source then watched a dim, dome-topped object with a spinning perimeter glow rise vertically, stop spinning, and pass over the train at tremendous speed.
This Foreign Broadcast Information Service transcript, dated 25 January 1996 and held in CIA records, reproduces a BBC World Service "Focus on Africa" interview with Somaliland leader Mohamed Egal about mysterious explosions in the region's remote east in December. Egal said a four-man commission found that animals were still stampeding and residents had skin rashes, boils and stomach problems. He rejected UFO explanations and suggested an unidentified missile had exploded. He asked the American, British and French governments to say what happened.
This CIA-released FBIS translation of a 26 June 1996 ITAR-TASS report from Vilnius was approved for release in March 1997. It says two Lithuanian motor police officers saw a spherical, pulsing object hovering 20 to 30 meters above the ground near the village of Nemezis, on the Vilnius-Medininkai road, early on 25 June. The object made a crackling sound and flew off toward Vilnius. ARAS rapid reaction troops, sniffer dogs and civil defense staff searched the site, measured radiation and found grass flattened in a 10 meter radius.
This is a JPRS translation (JPRS-UIA-90-001, dated 15 January 1990) of English summaries of major articles from the Soviet journal Narody Azii i Afriki, No 4. The CIA later approved it for release. Most of the summaries cover economics, socialism, diplomacy and religion in Asia and Africa. One summary, of A.D. Dikaryov's article "Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) in Ancient China," describes Chinese UFO societies and the journal Feidie Tansuo, and their efforts to find historical evidence of UFOs in ancient Chinese sources.
This Central Intelligence Agency release, dated 17 September 1998, is a sanitized set of log entries from December 1952. They record a request from the FBI liaison officer. J. Edgar Hoover had learned that flying saucers were discussed at the IAC meeting of 4 December and asked for whatever information the CIA would share. After consulting General Smith, the CIA authorized O/SI to brief IAC members, and a 24 December entry notes that no further follow-up was needed.
This is a Washington Star newspaper article held in Central Intelligence Agency files, with a release date of 1998-10-15. It reports that the Air Force signed a $330,000, 15-month contract with the University of Colorado for a UFO study directed by Dr. Edward U. Condon. The group would review Project Blue Book methods and investigate selected sightings, and a National Academy of Sciences panel would review the report. The Air Force said all but 655 of about 11,000 reports since 1948 had been explained, with no threat to national security found.
This Central Intelligence Agency file, dated 1998-10-15, holds a New York Times article by Walter Sullivan. It reports that the Air Force hired the University of Colorado for a 15-month study of unidentified flying objects, with physicist Dr. Edward U. Condon as scientific director. The article says the project grew out of public distrust of how the Air Force handled reports through Project Blue Book. It adds that witnesses will be offered anonymity and that the university alone will draw the conclusions.
This newspaper profile by writer William Hines, preserved in a sanitized CIA release, reports that the Air Force signed a $313,000 contract with the University of Colorado for a scientific inquiry into UFOs led by physicist Dr. Edward Uhler Condon. It covers his career, the security-risk charges made against him by the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1947 and 1948, and his press conference in New York. It also notes that NICAP warned the inquiry might be superficial.
This Central Intelligence Agency information report, released in 1998, records an unnamed source's account of an unidentified object seen over Montevideo, Uruguay, in about the last week of March 1955. The source and their wife, along with many others in the street, watched a very bright hovering light with a smaller light below it. The light then moved south, pulsing in brightness, and made no sound. The source was certain it was not a conventional aircraft or missile.
This Central Intelligence Agency release, approved in 2000, is a set of English abstracts of German-language articles from the Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie und Grenzgebiete der Psychologie. The articles date from 1973 and 1975. One abstract covers Johannes Mischo's critique of the statistical models used in ESP card-guessing experiments. It concludes that subjects cannot produce random call sequences. The other abstracts cover a survey of German theologians, a schizophrenia case history, a psi theory, and Illo Brand's study of the spectrum of UFO sightings, which discusses the Condon examination.
This Central Intelligence Agency release, dated 1998-12-10, is the report of a panel of scientific consultants convened at the request of the Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence to judge whether Unidentified Flying Objects threaten national security. The panel reviewed evidence from the Air Technical Intelligence Center and found no direct physical threat, no foreign artifacts and no need to revise scientific concepts. It recommended stripping UFOs of their special status and aura of mystery, and educating the public.
This CIA file, dated 1999-02-02, holds a newspaper article by Bob Thomas of the Southern Arizona Bureau. In it, University of Arizona physicist Dr. James E. McDonald says UFOs may be extraterrestrial craft on peaceful reconnaissance missions. McDonald charges that a classified CIA order attached to the Robertson Report told the Air Force to debunk UFO reports. He also says the order called for surveillance of groups such as APRO. He criticizes Project Blue Book for failing to investigate credible sightings.
This Central Intelligence Agency file, dated 1999-03-08, is a clipping of a reader's letter from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The writer argues that UFOs are extraterrestrial craft under intelligent control and have been entering Earth's atmosphere in large numbers since 1944. The letter accuses the Air Force, the CIA and the National Security Council of running a propaganda campaign that dismisses UFOs as misidentifications. It praises Major Donald E. Keyhoe's push for an open congressional investigation.
This is a clipping from the Passaic, New Jersey Herald-News, dated January 22, 1954 on the page, found in Central Intelligence Agency files. It is a letter to the editor from John Laval of Matawan, a NICAP member. Laval argues that UFOs are extraterrestrial machines that have been observing Earth since 1944. He accuses the Air Force, the CIA and the National Security Council of running a propaganda campaign to dismiss them, and he praises Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe's push for a congressional investigation.
This CIA-held FOIA release, dated 1999-03-08, reproduces a letter to the editor published in the Dayton, Ohio News on April 30, 1964. In the letter, John Laval of Matawan, New Jersey, argues that UFOs are extraterrestrial machines that have been observing Earth since 1944. He claims the Air Force, the CIA and the National Security Council have run a propaganda campaign to hide this. He also backs Maj. Donald E. Keyhoe's push for open congressional hearings.
This Central Intelligence Agency study by Gerald K. Haines traces the Agency's involvement with UFOs from 1947 to 1990. It draws on records from a file review that DCI R. James Woolsey ordered in 1993. According to the study, CIA concern was substantial until the early 1950s, and after that the Agency paid only limited attention. The study covers the 1953 Robertson panel and its finding that UFOs posed no threat. It also reports that U-2 and OXCART flights accounted for many sightings, and it describes CIA efforts to conceal its role.
This Central Intelligence Agency release, approved for release in 2000, is a roster from the Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, which met 14 to 17 January 1953. It lists the members and associates with their organizations and fields of competence. These include physicists, astronomers and geophysicists from Caltech, the University of California, Brookhaven, Johns Hopkins and Ohio State, along with CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence officials, ATIC and USAF intelligence staff, and Navy photo interpreters.
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum, dated 13 October 1952, was written by James Q. Reber, Assistant Director for Intelligence Coordination, to the Deputy Director (Intelligence). It notes that Air Force research through ATIC had explained all but 20 percent of about 1,500 reported sightings. OSI found no evidence that the saucers were Soviet created or controlled. The memo concludes that fundamental scientific research belongs to the Defense Department and that psychological warfare planning would be premature.
This Central Intelligence Agency release, dated 2000-01-06, holds a draft memorandum from the Director of Central Intelligence to the Secretary of Defense and an Intelligence Advisory Committee cover sheet. The memo says the Air Force has received about 1500 official sighting reports, of which about 20% remain unexplained, and that the situation may affect national security. It recommends an expanded Defense Department scientific research program working closely with intelligence. It also asks the Watch Committee to watch for Russian actions related to flying saucers.
This Foreign Broadcast Information Service cable from FBIS Okinawa, dated 19 February 1993, relays a Kyodo news report. It was released by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2000. According to the report, Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry planned a research institute, likely set up in 1995, for the scientific study of art, culture and parapsychology, including telepathy and UFOs, for use in next-generation industry. A MITI panel was collecting brain wave data and would draft an interim report by May.
This CIA-released page from Parapsychology Abstracts International, approved for release in 2000, collects German-language abstracts from the Zeitschrift für Parapsychologie und Grenzgebiete der Psychologie. Entry 01914 summarizes Illo Brand's 1975 article "The spectrum of UFO sightings." The article argues that scientists resist UFO research for sociopsychological reasons and criticizes the Condon examination for trying to explain every sighting as a natural phenomenon, a fraud or an illusion. It concludes that a spectrum based on 50,000 computerized reports is needed to tell whether UFOs are physical or parapsychological.
This National Photographic Interpretation Center photographic interpretation report, dated January 1965 and released by the Central Intelligence Agency, was prepared for a CIA study of Chinese surface-to-air missile capability. It covers 14 SA-2 SAM sites, 6 former sites, the Tai-yuan Probable Solid Propellants Test Facility and the Peiping Rocket Engine Test Facility. It also estimates hypothetical dimensions of an unidentified Chinese missile from a single Time magazine photograph, cautioning that more photography is needed.
This Central Intelligence Agency document, released in 2000, lists the evidence presented to the Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, which met 14 to 17 January 1953. The evidence included seventy-five case histories from 1951 and 1952, Project Grudge, Blue Book, Stork and Twinkle reports, and motion picture films taken at Tremonton, Utah, and Great Falls, Montana. It also included balloon charts and samples, radar manuals, and intelligence reports on Soviet interest in US sightings.
This CIA internal newsletter, Information Review and Release (IRR) News, covers 18 December 2000 to 5 January 2001 and is dated for release in 2019. It lists upcoming dates for declassification panels and deadlines under Executive Order 12958. It reports NARA's request for CIA help scanning and declassifying records at presidential libraries, and a volunteer escort for the Clinton materials moving to Arkansas. It also summarizes FOIA requests, including one from a Canadian requester interested in UFOs who asked about former NPIC Director Arthur Lundahl.
This is an unclassified CIA weekly newsletter from Information Review and Release, covering 8 to 12 January 2001. It lists upcoming meetings and the automatic declassification deadlines under Executive Order 12958. It also covers the review of 67,000 pages of National Security Council records and a 1953 memo on the value of open Soviet literature. In addition, it summarizes FOIA requests, including one from a requester with past interest in UFO information who asked about Glenn Miller's 1944 disappearance.
This is the Central Intelligence Agency's Information Review and Release (IRR) weekly news executive summary for 5 to 9 March 2001, released in 2019. It lists upcoming declassification panel meetings and deadlines. It also describes a Princeton University conference on CIA analysis of the Soviet Union, for which over 19,000 pages were released. Other items cover FOIA requests, including a British requester who wanted the 1951 D.S.I./J.T.I.C. Report No. 7 on Unidentified Flying Objects, plus a 1949 study on CIA and IAC cooperation.
This sanitized Central Intelligence Agency information report, approved for release on 2 April 2001, sets out UFO sightings reported in February and March 1968 over Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan. For each sighting it gives the date, local time, area, direction of flight and a description of the object. The objects included bright lights, rocket-like trails and objects heard with thunder sounds. A metallic disc-shaped object was reportedly found in a crater near Pokhara, Nepal. Pages also quote Donald Keyhoe and Edward Condon.
This CIA-released copy, approved for release in 2001, reproduces a LOOK magazine condensation of John G. Fuller's book The Interrupted Journey. It recounts Betty and Barney Hill's September 19, 1961 sighting near Indian Head, New Hampshire, their two missing hours, Dr. Benjamin Simon's hypnosis sessions and Walter Webb's NICAP investigation. Simon found neither patient psychotic but said nothing was proved. The file also includes an Air Force UFO report form and a letter from J. Allen Hynek urging scientific study of UFOs.
This declassified CIA memorandum, approved for release on 2 April 2001, was written by H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence, to the Deputy Director (Intelligence). It asks for approval in principle to set up an external research project in which an Ad Hoc Panel of top-level scientists would analyze the available evidence on Unidentified Flying Objects and recommend further action. The memo estimates the cost at about $5,000, classifies the project SECRET and says U.S. Air Force personnel would take part.
This CIA release, approved in 2001, is a set of reprinted science press articles about UFOs from 1969 to 1971. A Science News piece reports that UFO sightings fell after the 1968 Condon report and gives NICAP and academic views on why. An AIAA UFO Subcommittee review calls the Condon report the most scientific study so far but argues that its hard core of unexplained cases justifies further study. A Science editorial by Hudson Hoagland argues that more UFO investigation would be wasteful.
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum, dated 26 January 1965 and released in 2001, was sent by Donald F. Chamberlain, Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence, to the Director of Central Intelligence. It reviews recent UFO reports, including incidents at Sunnyvale, California, the Gemini launch and Patuxent, Maryland, and finds no evidence that UFOs are of foreign origin or a threat to United States security. The Office of Scientific Intelligence concurs with the Air Force conclusions. Air Force statistics for 1954 to 1964 are attached.
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum for record on flying saucers is dated 3 December 1952 and marked secret. It was approved for release in 2001. Most of the text is redacted. Its surviving conclusion is that a scientific review of the problem would probably need the full backing of the DCI. Without that backing, the writer judged it would likely be impossible to get the Air Force cooperation needed, particularly access to reports. A routing and record sheet addressed to AD/SI is attached.
This CIA memorandum was released in 2001. It is dated 13 October 1952 and was written by James Q. Reber, Assistant Director for Intelligence Coordination, to the Deputy Director (Intelligence). It says Air Force analysis through ATIC had explained all but 20 per cent of about 1500 reported sightings, and that OSI found no evidence the saucers were Soviet-made or Soviet-controlled. It concludes that fundamental scientific research is the Defense Department's responsibility and proposes a letter from the DCI to Secretary Lovett.
This Central Intelligence Agency briefing text on flying saucers, released in 2001, gives the Office of Scientific Intelligence's survey of the Air Force study after General Samford's July 29 press conference. It traces reports from Kenneth Arnold's 1947 sighting through Mantell, Gorman and White Sands, and describes ATIC's classes of sightings and figures on unexplained cases. It weighs four theories and finds no evidence for Russian or interplanetary origins. A draft National Security Council directive tasking the DCI with UFO research is attached.