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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 18
This unclassified CIA record, dated 25 March 1993, summarizes a Russian-language broadcast that China Radio International aired from Beijing that day. Most of the program was news: the National People's Congress, Chinese economic reform, nuclear power, relations with Hong Kong and Taiwan, and foreign events in Russia, Bosnia, Iraq and Australia. It also lists a 15.5-minute mailbag segment reporting on UFOs, but the summary gives no details of what that segment said.
This Foreign Broadcast Information Service translation, released by the CIA in May 2000, reproduces a 27 March 1993 article in the Kiev newspaper Holos Ukrayiny, reprinted from Ternopil Vechirniy. It repeats a Weekly World News claim that US intelligence obtained a 250-page KGB file on a UFO attack on a Soviet military unit in Siberia. According to the account, soldiers shot down a saucer, five humanoids merged into a sphere that exploded, and 23 soldiers were turned to stone. Only two survived.
This Central Intelligence Agency press selection list, dated 1 April 1993, names five items selected by CISD for processing from the Moscow weekly Argumenty i Fakty No 16 of April 1993. The items are an interview with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, a Security Ministry spokesman's rejection of KGB cooperation allegations and commentaries on privatization. Also listed are an interview with Military Space Forces commander Col. Gen. V. Ivanov covering Baykonur, budget and UFOs, and an article on Moscow's Butyrka Prison.
This CIA-distributed JPRS report, dated 1 April 1993, translates an Argumenty i Fakty interview by D. Makarov with V. Ivanov, commander of Russia's Military Space Forces. Ivanov discusses the effects of the Soviet collapse, control complexes transferred to Ukraine, staffing and funding problems at Baykonur, and civilian uses of space. On UFOs, he says northern sightings studied by an institute coincided with Plesetsk launches, but notes three unexplained radar objects near Baykonur about five years earlier.
This is an unclassified CIA-distributed translation of a Moscow ITAR-TASS World Service report dated 27 April 1993. It describes an article by Oleg Lobov, first deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers and Russian economics minister, about Russia's aerospace industry. The article predicts that three geostationary satellites could support a global communications system and that "flying saucers" could become a normal form of air transport in Russia. It also discusses conversion of the aerospace industry and a new Russian Center for the Conversion of the Aerospace Industry.
This JPRS translation, dated 1 May 1993 and released by the Central Intelligence Agency, reproduces an article by Col. Marian Kopczewski of Poland's Higher Officers School of Antiaircraft Defense. The article appeared in a Polish air force and air defense journal. Kopczewski assesses the military threats Poland faces from its neighbors after the Warsaw Pact dissolved. He argues for restructuring Polish air defense into separate peacetime and wartime systems. He notes that during the Cold War any unidentified flying object was once taken as the start of World War III.
This 11 June 1993 JPRS translation, released by the Central Intelligence Agency, covers reader letters that the Moscow newspaper Rossiyskiye Vesti printed for its Operation Radiation. That campaign gathered public reports of radioactive contamination. The letters cover harm from nuclear weapons production in the Urals and a uranium deposit near the Karintorf settlement. They also warn about nuclear power plants along the Volga. One letter looks at rumors of an accident at Tomsk-7 that were traced to mediums, clairvoyants and claimed telepathic contact with aliens. It also mentions UFO researchers who forecast an accident at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant.
This Central Intelligence Agency translation, dated 8 July 1993, covers a Moscow Russian Television "M-Trust" report on the Saratov Aviation Plant. It says a visiting session of the Ministry of Science Collegium approved the plant's plan for comprehensive retooling and quality certification, which could raise aircraft production tenfold. The plant builds Yak-40 and Yak-42 airliners. It is also assembling a "flying saucer" air-cushion craft that needs no airfield and is meant to carry passengers and cargo.
This is a Central Intelligence Agency translation, dated 14 July 1993, of an article by Viktor Litovkin in the Moscow newspaper Izvestiya. The article describes a disc-shaped flying craft built at the Saratov Aircraft Plant by the Ekip firm and designed by Lev Shchukin, which uses the surface effect combined with an air cushion. A shortage of money had delayed its test flights. A planned 120-tonne, 25-meter version would cost about $70 million, and foreign firms had shown interest in the project.
This Central Intelligence Agency translation, dated 13 August 1993, is an Izvestiya article by Aleksandr Kislov on economic reform plans in Saratov Oblast. It explains a proposal by aviation plant director Aleksandr Yermishin, approved by Premier Viktor Chernomyrdin, for a US and Russian backed conversion and privatization fund that would draw in private investment. The only UFO link is a passing description of a new aircraft design that looks like a "flying saucer".
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 U.S. State Department cable, sent from the U.S. Embassy in Dushanbe on January 31, 1994, reports a UFO sighting by Tajik Air chief pilot Ed Rhodes and two American colleagues. On January 27, while flying a Boeing 747SP at 41,000 feet over Kazakhstan, the crew watched a very bright light maneuver for about forty minutes. It left contrails that Rhodes estimated at 100,000 feet. The crew rejected a meteor explanation, and the embassy said it had no opinion.
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 July 1994 report from the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force (SAF/AAZ) was prepared in response to a General Accounting Office audit that Congressman Steven Schiff requested about the 1947 Roswell Incident. The report describes Air Force searches of records and interviews with people involved, including Sheridan Cavitt. It found no records of a cover-up, alien bodies or extraterrestrial materials. It concludes that the debris found near Roswell most likely came from a Project Mogul balloon that was never recovered.
The Roswell Report: Fact versus Fiction in the New Mexico Desert was published by Headquarters United States Air Force in 1995. The Black Vault distributes this copy. It reproduces the report by Col. Richard L. Weaver and the synopsis by 1st Lt. James McAndrew, both written after a General Accounting Office inquiry requested by Representative Steven Schiff. The Air Force search found no evidence of an extraterrestrial craft or crew. It concluded that the Roswell debris most likely came from NYU Flight No. 4, a Project MOGUL balloon train.
This July 28, 1995 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office to Representative Steven H. Schiff sets out the results of a search for government records on the 1947 crash near Roswell, New Mexico. GAO found that some Roswell Army Air Field records had been destroyed without a stated authority. Only two 1947 records turned up: a 509th Bomb Group history and an FBI teletype, and both describe a radar-tracking or weather balloon. The report also notes the Air Force conclusion that the wreckage most likely came from Project MOGUL.
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.
During STS-80, between November 19 and December 7, 1996, astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Columbia captured a series of three images of an unidentified object in low-Earth orbit. In the first photograph, the object is visible near the center of the frame, to the right of the limb of the Earth.
During STS-80, between November 19 and December 7, 1996, astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Columbia captured a series of three images of an unidentified object in low-Earth orbit. In the second photograph, the object is visible near the center of the frame, to the right of the limb of the Earth. It appears to have rotated or tumbled about its major axis, which is consistent with the behavior of a free-floating object.
During STS-80, between November 19 and December 7, 1996, astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Columbia captured a series of three images of an unidentified object in low-Earth orbit. In the third photograph, the object is visible near the center of the frame, superimposed against the Earth. It appears to have continued along a trajectory passing between Columbia and the Earth.
The United States Navy Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) transferred this media to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in 2022. The video contains 2 minutes and 57 seconds of footage likely captured by an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform in 1996. Video Description: No formal data handling practices for UAP-related records existed at the time this media was reported to the UAPTF. This media was digitally altered before being reported to the UAPTF, and is presented as it was received by AARO. 00:01-00:13: No content. 00:14-00:17: An area of contrast transits the sensor field-of-view, entering near the upper right corner and exiting near the lower left corner of the frame. 00:18-01:21: The footage repeats frame-by-frame. 01:22-02:13: The footage repeats at a slower playback speed. 02:14-02:56: The footage holds on a frame extracted from the first 17 seconds of the video. This video description is provided for informational purposes only. Readers should not interpret any part of this description as reflecting an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination regarding the described event’s validity, nature, or significance.
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 final report, dated September 10, 1996, was prepared by the Research Triangle Institute for the Department of the Air Force's 45th and 30th Space Wing safety offices. Titled Modeling Unlikely Space-Booster Failures in Risk Calculations, it shows how rare Mode-5 failures, in which a rocket veers well off its intended flight line, are modeled in the DAMP risk-analysis program. An appendix lists Atlas, Delta, Titan and Thor launch and failure histories through August 1996.
This 1997 study by Gerald K. Haines, National Reconnaissance Office historian, traces CIA interest in UFOs from the late 1940s to 1990 using Agency records compiled after DCI R. James Woolsey ordered a 1993 file review. It covers Air Force projects SIGN, GRUDGE and BLUE BOOK, the 1953 Robertson panel, U-2 and OXCART flights mistaken for UFOs, and disputes with Keyhoe and Davidson. It concludes that Agency concern was substantial until the early 1950s and limited and peripheral since.
The Roswell Report: Case Closed is a 1997 US Air Force report written by Captain James McAndrew, with a foreword by Secretary of the Air Force Sheila E. Widnall. It follows up the 1994 report, which found that the 1947 debris came from the balloon project MoGUL. It concludes that the reported alien bodies were probably anthropomorphic test dummies dropped from high altitude balloons. It attributes the hospital body claims to a 1956 KC-97 crash and a 1959 manned balloon mishap.
On 1 May 1997 the records management office of the 56th Fighter Wing at Luke AFB, Arizona, sent John Greenewald, Jr. a letter answering his Freedom of Information Act request. The letter says no responsive records exist. It says Luke's F-16 training aircraft had no involvement in the lights seen over Phoenix on 13 March 1997, and that base staff never told the Strange Universe program the lights were flares. It also explains how to appeal to the Secretary of the Air Force.
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.
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.