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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.Documents2,872 records · page 14
This Central Intelligence Agency routing and record sheet, dated June 3, 1976, carries a note to the Deputy Chief of OD&E about a shared personal interest in UFO phenomena. The writer says DCD had been receiving UFO related material from Agency S&T sources. It describes these sources as credible scientists, not the "nut" variety. The attached material is forwarded as having possible FI or community interest. The note suggests that one doctor's work be evaluated and offers further discussion, or else destruction of the material.
This Central Intelligence Agency cable, dated 25 June 1976 and headed "UFO Research/ORD Request for Additional Information," has heavy deletions. It says the Office of Research and Development (ORD) has shown some interest in the work of an unnamed party and asks for more information. It notes that earlier correspondence mentioned a chance of getting a fuller description of a system, asks for whatever is available, and requests updates on any new developments.
This short, heavily redacted Central Intelligence Agency memorandum is dated 25 June 1976. It records a meeting that day with the Secretary of ORD about whether that office might be interested in a UFO case. The writer gave the Secretary copies of earlier memoranda, and the Secretary said ORD might have continuing interest once it had evaluated the material. The Secretary asked for more information on an unnamed system and wanted ORD's interest kept low profile until then. A TWX was sent requesting the information.
This Central Intelligence Agency routing slip, dated 14 July 1976, is addressed to the Deputy Chief of OD&E. The writer notes that the recipient mentioned a personal interest in UFO phenomena at a recent meeting. It adds that DCD had been receiving UFO material from Agency S&T sources doing related research. The slip forwards attached material thought to have possible FI or community interest, including work by a doctor whose name is redacted. It offers further discussion or says the material may be destroyed.
This heavily redacted Central Intelligence Agency cable, dated 5 August 1976 in the archive record, survives only in fragments. The legible text refers to a date of 23 September and a personal request to investigate a UFO sighted in Morocco. The rest of the message is withheld or unreadable, so the document names no findings, witnesses or conclusions. It carries a later stamp approving it for release.
This Black Vault FOIA release contains a 22 August 1996 cover letter from the Defense Intelligence Agency and the one responsive document, a September 1976 intelligence report sent from USDAO Tehran to DIA. The report describes a UFO seen over Tehran on 19 September 1976. Two Imperial Iranian Air Force F-4s were scrambled, and both lost instruments or communications when they approached the object. Smaller objects came out of the main object, and one appeared to land. The crew later picked up a beeper signal, and the area was being checked for radiation.
This is a heavily redacted Central Intelligence Agency Domestic Collection Division Foreign Intelligence Information Report from the Directorate of Operations, dated October 4, 1976, on UFO phenomena. The surviving excerpt records a person being asked for a personal opinion of the UFO phenomenon. That person was told that 99 percent of such occurrences trace to natural or man-made causes such as celestial movement, aircraft or artificial satellites, while the remaining one percent cannot be explained and may be hallucination.
This Central Intelligence Agency Domestic Collection Division report, distributed 18 November 1976 and marked unevaluated, describes a light seen from British European Airways flight 831 from Moscow to London on 10 September 1976. Over Lithuania at about 33,000 feet, the crew saw a blinding, stationary, yellowish light below the aircraft that lit the clouds for 10 to 15 minutes. When the pilot asked Soviet authorities to identify it, they gave no identification and suggested he should not ask questions.
This Central Intelligence Agency Domestic Collection Division report, dated 18 November 1976 and marked as unevaluated information, describes a light seen during British European Airways flight 831 from Moscow to London on 10 September 1976. Over Lithuania at about 33,000 feet, the crew and passengers saw a blinding, stationary, yellowish light above a cloud layer for 10 to 15 minutes. When the pilot asked Soviet authorities what it was, they gave no identification and suggested he should not ask questions.
This Central Intelligence Agency biographical brief, dated 21 March 1977, profiles Soviet biologist Inal Akoyev, who has done military-related research on non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation standards since at least 1972. It traces his earlier work on the biological effects of radiation, space radiation studies, and a fungi experiment during the 1975 Apollo Soyuz Test Project that U.S. scientists regarded as technically invalid. It notes his 1976 study of phosphenes seen by Aeroflot pilots, which it calls a possible cause of UFO claims, and his visits to the United States.
This Central Intelligence Agency memorandum, dated 3 June 1977, was written by General Counsel Anthony A. Lapham to the Director of Research and Development, DDS&T. It forwards a letter from an acquaintance who proposed a comprehensive research project on the global UFO phenomenon, to be carried out by a multidisciplinary team at SRI. The project would review government policies, analyze UFO data, assess ways of collecting data and propose a national research plan. Lapham states that he strongly suspects the Agency has no interest.
This Central Intelligence Agency compilation, dated 5 August 1977, reproduces translated Soviet TASS news items from 22 September 1977 on national and scientific affairs. The central item reports that on 20 September residents of Petrozavodsk, Karelia, saw a huge star that moved over the city like a medusa, showered it with fine rays and then headed toward Lake Onega. The local observatory director called it an unexplained riddle. Other items cover the Prognoz-6 launch and a women's Il-62 flight record.
This Central Intelligence Agency compilation, dated 23 September 1977, reproduces TASS wire reports from 22 September 1977. The central item reports that residents of Petrozavodsk, Karelia, saw a huge star at about 0400 on 20 September. It spread over the city like a medusa, showered it with fine rays, and then moved toward Lake Onega, with the whole sighting lasting 10 to 12 minutes. Observatory director Yu. Gromov called the cause a riddle and said it was not a mirage. The pages also carry the Prognoz-6 launch and an IL-62 record flight.
This Central Intelligence Agency intelligence information report on the USSR is dated 2 November 1977 and was distributed in December 1977. It relays a source's account of an unidentified phenomenon seen at Site 7 one evening in late summer 1973. The source stepped outside during a televised Canada versus USSR sports competition and saw a bright green circular mass in the eastern sky. Concentric green circles formed around it before the color faded within minutes, with no sound, and the source offered no explanation.
NASA Information Sheet 78-1, prepared by the Public Services Branch at NASA Headquarters and dated February 1, 1978, answers public UFO inquiries sent to the White House and NASA. It quotes Administrator Robert Frosch's December 1977 letter, which declines to start UFO research but offers to analyze credible physical evidence. It also summarizes the Air Force's 1969 termination of Project Blue Book and the Condon Report, and discusses astronaut sightings and Jimmy Carter's 1969 sighting over Leary, Georgia.
This Central Intelligence Agency memo, dated 9 February 1978, went from the Chief of the Minneapolis Office to the Chief of the Domestic Collection Division. It passes on a caller's report that might relate to the Soviet satellite that fell in Canada on 24 January 1978. The caller said that on 27 January, while crossing a bridge on his way to work, he saw an odd object coming down in the sky. No description was obtained, and the office said it would pass the information to the Air Force.
This Central Intelligence Agency compilation of translated Argentine press and radio items from May 1978, approved for release in 1980, includes an EFE report from Salta. Official sources said an object seen falling near the Argentine-Bolivian border on 6 May, which caused an explosion that shook the earth, was an artificial satellite located on Taire Mountain in Bolivia, where the area was declared an emergency zone. Other items cover nuclear plans, arrests, a YPF credit and briefs.
This Central Intelligence Agency release is a compilation of foreign broadcast and press items from May 1978. It was approved for release in March 1980. Its main item is a 16 May 1978 Radio La Plata report from Sucre on conflicting accounts of an unidentified object that fell on a hill in Bolivia near the Argentine border. The accounts say Bolivian authorities asked NASA for help, the border was closed and the area was cordoned off. The report asks whether the object was a satellite, a meteorite or a false alarm.
This Central Intelligence Agency Office of General Counsel memorandum, OGC 78-2170, is dated 6 April 1978 and comes from Assistant General Counsel A. R. Cinquegrana. It sends Agency officers a computerized list, current as of early February 1978, of litigation, investigations and congressional inquiries that extend how long relevant records must be kept. The alphabetical index links names, programs and topics to cases such as Halkin v. Helms and the Kennedy and King assassination probes. It lists Flying Saucers and UFOs under Ground Saucer Watch v. CIA.
This Central Intelligence Agency compilation of Latin American broadcast and press items, dated 17 May 1978, includes a Sucre Radio La Plata report of 16 May 1978 on conflicting accounts of an unidentified object said to have fallen on a hill in Bolivia near the Argentine border. Argentine and Uruguayan radio reported that Bolivian authorities had sought help from NASA. Reports also said the border was closed and 200 km around the site was cordoned off. The item asks whether the object was a satellite, a meteorite or a false alarm.
This is a December 1979 Central Intelligence Agency study published by the Directorate of Operations Counterintelligence Staff. It describes the Enemy Proselytizing Department (Cuc Dich Van) of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Ministry of National Defense. The study traces the department's origins from 1941 through the French and Vietnam wars. It covers psychological warfare, fifth column penetration of ARVN and allied forces, the handling of US and allied prisoners of war, and the postwar reeducation of former ARVN personnel. It contains no material on UFOs.
This Central Intelligence Agency database record, dated September 1980, indexes a translated five-page article titled "UFO Phenomenon in China Analyzed." The article was written by Cha Leping and appeared in the Chinese journal Ziran Zazhi. The record says the translation was issued as JPRS report 77236 and is unclassified. The article text itself is not reproduced here. The entry refers readers to document 53 for the full text, so no findings or conclusions are given.
This is a CIA translation, dated 1 October 1980, of an article by Jin Tao titled "Sightings of Flying Saucers in China" from the Harbin magazine Kexue Shidai (Scientific Age), No 5. The article prints excerpts from letters that readers sent in during 1979. The writers describe glowing, rotating discs, wheels and globes seen across China between 1943 and 1979, including sightings in Shaanxi, Gansu, Jiangxi and Beijing. The magazine says it cannot yet explain the sightings but will keep collecting clues.
This is a parliamentary question published by Spain's Congreso de los Diputados on 14 October 1980. Deputy Enrique Múgica Herzog of the Basque Socialist group submitted it for an oral answer in committee. It describes how a TAE Super-Caravelle flying from Palma to the Canary Islands on 11 November 1979 diverted to Manises after an unidentified object approached it. It also covers lights seen over the airport and a Mirage F-1 scramble from Los Llanos. The deputy asks the Government what the objects were.
This Central Intelligence Agency records retirement request, dated 17 October 1980, comes from the Office of Legislative Counsel. It retires 16mm microfilm copies of documents the CIA reviewed in response to House Select Committee on Assassinations inquiries into the deaths of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Attached 1983 memos record that a District Court ordered the agency to process this segregated HSCA collection in the Allen v. Department of Defense FOIA suit. File review worksheets list the HSCA requests and reports.
This Foreign Broadcast Information Service China Report on science and technology, JPRS 77236, dated 26 January 1981 and released through the CIA, translates Chinese technical articles. Its lead item, from the journal Ziran Zazhi (Sep 1980), surveys almost 100 Chinese UFO eyewitness accounts. It sorts them into disk or globe, huge long, and spiral nebula types, and details sightings from 1965 to 1979. The authors judge the reports substantially reliable and call for objective scientific study. They also link some Chinese reports to foreign events. The remaining items cover electronics and computing.
This Central Intelligence Agency file holds an internal Office of Scientific Intelligence memo and a proposed reply from CIA General Counsel Lawrence R. Houston to Representative Joseph E. Karth. The reply answers a constituent's claims that the CIA created the flying saucer furor and was withholding parts of the January 1953 Scientific Advisory Panel report. It calls these claims entirely unfounded. It states that the CIA studied the national security threat with the Air Force in 1953, has taken part in no saucer activities since, and refers all correspondence to the Air Force.
This Central Intelligence Agency File Review Worksheet, dated 24 November 1981 and released in full in 1999 under the CIA Historical Review Program, is a records inventory. It lists files from House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) requests handled through the Office of Legislative Counsel from late 1977 through 1978, along with HSCA reports and individual files on subjects such as Oswald, Nosenko, Castro, Trafficante, Garrison and the 1967 IG report. It does not mention UFOs.
This Joint Committee Print, dated December 8, 1982, gathers studies that the Central Intelligence Agency's Directorate of Intelligence prepared for the Joint Economic Committee of the US Congress. It gives estimates of Soviet gross national product for 1950 to 1980, with indexes of industrial production, agricultural production and consumption, and explains the methods and data behind them. The foreword says official Soviet statistics inflate growth and that the CIA measures offer a more accurate picture. The document contains no UFO material.
This Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Intelligence reference aid, ALA 83-10064, is dated June 1983. It lists major international and domestic events affecting Cuba between 1 January and 31 December 1982, arranged alphabetically by country, plus sections on the Nonaligned Movement and the Palestine Liberation Movement. Entries include Cuban troops in Angola, Cuban support for Argentina in the Falklands dispute, and trade and cooperation agreements with many nations. It does not discuss UFOs.
This is an edited translation by the U.S. Air Force Foreign Technology Division, dated 9 September 1983, of a 1982 Chinese magazine article by Long Ruyi. It describes a huge spiral UFO seen by some 10,000,000 people across Sichuan, Yunnan and other parts of China on 24 July 1981. The article rejects the meteor theory using observatory calculations and notes witness reports of hovering. It concludes that proof of an alien source is lacking and returns to the spy plane hypothesis.
This Central Intelligence Agency report, dated 3 February 1984, reviews how Soviet leaders, well-connected commentators and routine media treated President Reagan from November 1980 onward. It finds that Moscow twice softened its line: once after the 1980 election and again when Andropov came to power. After the Korean airliner was shot down, Soviet treatment of Reagan became the most abusive in years. Attached excerpts include a Yakovlev article claiming Reagan believes in flying saucers.
This Central Intelligence Agency report, dated 1 June 1984 and marked unclassified for official use only, reviews how Soviet leaders and media treated President Reagan from November 1980 through May 1984. It finds that Moscow twice moderated its rhetoric to test prospects for better relations, and that attacks became the most abusive in two decades after the South Korean airliner shootdown. The report compiles authoritative Soviet statements and midlevel and routine media commentary as a baseline for analysts.
This U.S. Department of State cable was sent by the American Embassy in Port Moresby on January 28, 1985. It reports an informal inquiry from Papua New Guinea's National Intelligence Organization about high-altitude, high-speed aircraft and other unidentified aerial phenomena seen over PNG on the evening of January 24. The reports included an Air Niugini pilot's radar contact near Angoram and sightings of contrails. The embassy said it knew of no B-52 or other U.S. aircraft in PNG airspace that day and asked for confirmation.
This CIA-held translation of a TRUD article dated 30 January 1985 reports a sighting by the crew of Aeroflot Tu-134 Flight 8352, flying from Tbilisi to Tallin. About 120 kilometers from Minsk, the crew saw a luminous object that cast beams of light and became a green cloud that escorted the aircraft to Tallin. Minsk and Tallin controllers and a Leningrad crew are cited as confirming it. N. A. Zheltukhin of the Commission on Aerodynamic Phenomena concludes that the crew encountered a UFO.
This is a Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, dated 23 December 1985 and logged as FOIA-85-848. The requester asks for all records of "Unusual Events" and possible security threats at the Indian Point nuclear power plant around 24 July 1984, including any violations of the plant's airspace. Two newspaper clippings are attached. One is a National Enquirer story in which security guards and police describe a huge diamond-shaped UFO over the plant. The other covers an October 1985 earthquake that the plant classified as an Unusual Event.
This is a meeting notice dated May 20, 1986 from the Pajarito Astronomers, a club based in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and it was released through the U.S. Department of Energy. It tells members that the next meeting will be held on Thursday, May 29, 1986, at 7:30 p.m. in the Ranch Room at Fuller Lodge. The guest speaker will be Dr. John Warren of AT-6, and his talk is titled "Why Should a Scientist be Concerned about UFO's?"
This is a confidential occurrence report dated 2 June 1986, sent by Brigadier José Pessoa Cavalcanti de Albuquerque, acting commander of COMDA, to the Air General Command. It records radar detections, light sightings and fighter interceptions from Santa Cruz and Anápolis air bases on the night of 19 to 20 May 1986, centred on São José dos Campos and Anápolis. The report concludes that the phenomena were solid and showed some intelligence, since they could follow observers, keep their distance and fly in formation, though not necessarily crewed.
This letter comes from Karl H. Weber, Deputy Director of Scientific Intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, to Colonel Gerald B. Jorgensen of the Air Force Office of Information. It answers a 1955 request to declassify the "Report of the Scientific Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects." The Office of Scientific Intelligence says the original report cannot be downgraded but agrees to release an edited version that leaves out personnel and organization names. It asks that the CIA's sponsorship of the panel get no further publicity.
This Central Intelligence Agency document is a 1987 listing of Freedom of Information Act requests, released in 2021. Each entry gives the requester's name, the subject and the request date. Subjects range widely, covering MIAs, Libya, Afghanistan, Angola, the Cuban missile crisis, the Bay of Pigs, Studies in Intelligence and requests for records on the requester. A few entries ask for UFO material, among them a 1979 report on UFO sightings and general UFO files.