Declassified Intelligence Agency Documents

* Freedom of Information Act.   
* Summaries of declassified intelligence agency documents.  
* CIA and FBI summaries.

 
Intelligence agency documents span a time period of over fifty years. They are fascinating to study. Just think how much time, money, and energy went into the efforts these memos talk about, and think about the meaning of all this effort for something that supposedly does not exist: flying saucers. The following pages are summaries of some of the most complete letters and memos.

 
Complete copies of the documents mentioned in the summaries are reprinted in the 'Documents' section of this website. There are several thousand such declassified documents about flying saucers and UFOs that have been released through the Freedom of Information Act.

 Patterns Emerge

 Following the memos through the years you can see several patterns emerge:

 * Concern over "What are these things?"

 * Confusion over which military branch is in charge of UFOs.

 * Do UFOs pose a national security risk? Later memos indicate the belief       that they do not threaten the national security.

 * What do we tell the public? And, who tells them?

 * UFO events are worldwide, occurring in every country on earth.

Freedom of Information Act

 The Freedom of Information Act was passed by congress in 1974. It is designed to give citizens access to the information and documents they own and pay for with their hard-earned money. The act is often referred to simply as FOIA. Although the idea of information availability is honorable, it is not easy to implement; the government is so large and fragmented that documents are stored in many different archives at different locations under different systems.

You cannot just call up one place and say, "Please, send me all your UFO information." It is a painstaking process. It can take years to try to get a single document, only to be told the document is not available or does not exist. You have to have a pretty good idea of what you are looking for and where it originated. Having said that, check out the documents on the following pages. Also included are some reference guides to tell you how and where to get more copies of declassified top secret documents.

 Year: 1949

 Declassified Document Summaries

 491

Memo from Special Devices Center, U.S. Navy. 
Copy sent to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The memo basically says there are continuous sightings of unidentified flying objects over White Sands Proving Grounds, which was at the time the only nuclear air base in the world. The objects appear to be under intelligent control and the observer was the Navy's foremost expert on weather balloons. Yet, he doesn't know what these objects are.

492

National Security Council Intelligence Directive to the CIA.

Telling the CIA they are responsible for all research and intelligence gathering on unidentified flying objects. Also, that they (the CIA) are to coordinate their efforts with military researchers.

Time Check  
*  The Soviet Union explodes its first atomic bomb.  
*  General Mills and Pillsbury begin marketing prepared cake mixes. 
*  Murphy's Law is proclaimed for the first time: "If anything can go wrong,     it will," when Captain Edward Murphy sees an accelerometer mounted       backwards on a rocket sled.

 
493

OSI memo on flying saucers.

Memo contains a graph showing a tremendous increase in UFO sightings during the months of May through August of 1947.

Year:  1952

Declassified Document Summaries

 
521

National Security Council memo. Subject: flying saucers.

Directs CIA to research and solve problem of unidentified flying objects.

522

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) memo written by CIA Director. Subject: flying saucers.

523

1952 CIA memo. Topic: flying saucers. Discusses the following:

 "The phenomenal increase in flying saucer reports."

* Includes official CIA version of the first flying saucer sighting by Kenneth    Arnold in 1947.

*  Discusses hiding from the public the fact that the CIA is interested in         flying saucers.

*  Conclusion that flying saucers do not represent a military threat.

Time Check 
*  A polio epidemic hits the U.S., afflicting 47,663 people. Jonas Salk             invents polio vaccine. 
*  Jacques Cousteau invents SCUBA gear, becomes first man to use it to       explore underwater wreck. 
*  Mr. Potato Head becomes the first children's toy to be advertised on         television. 
*  George Jorgenson becomes Christine Jorgenson after the world's first         sex change operation.

 
524

Memo to Director of CIA from CIA assistant director of scientific intelligence. Subject: unidentified flying objects

The memo states: Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such a nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles.

Also, the memo establishes UFOs as "a priority project throughout the intelligence and defense research and development community."

525

Memo to the heads of all military and government intelligence agencies. 
Subject: flying saucer problem.

In essence, this memo says that flying saucers are a problem that should be attacked by a program of research and development.

Notice that the level of people sending and receiving these memos is the very top! No midlevel personnel involved.

Years:  1953-1958

Declassified Document Summaries

581

CIA Advisory Panel on unidentified flying objects. 1953.

The top minds from the major areas of science are gathered solely to discuss flying saucers. They concluded that UFOs were not a military threat; however misidentifying an enemy aircraft as a UFOs was a threat.

Time Check 
* Color television broadcasts begin. 1953.   
* Elvis records his first record. 1954.  
* Tractors outnumber horses in the U.S. for the first time. 1955.  
* James Brown records "Please, Please, Please." 1956. 
* First transatlantic phone cable put in. (Prior to this all calls to    Europe were made on a short-wave radio telephone.) 1956.  
* Sputnik, the first satellite, is put in space by Russia. 1957.  
* The first stereo records are sold. 1958.  
* The first aluminum cans are made by Kaiser Aluminum. 1958.

  
582

CIA memo. Subject: Non-conventional air vehicles. 1954.

When addressing the public, the military and the CIA call them "unidentified flying objects;" however, in-house they were known to be an referred to as "non-conventional air vehicles" as this memo shows. The term UFO originally stood for "unconventional" flying object, not "unidentified."

583

CIA memo 1955.

The CIA is responsible for all non-conventional types of air vehicles, but the project is to be considered inactive (as far as the public goes).

584

CIA memo from the assistant director. Subject: flying saucers 1956.

"Are we keeping in touch with the Air Force center on these things?"

585

CIA report from Hungary with diagram. 1956.

Flying saucers sighted flying in formation from Budapest to Moscow. Estimated speed: 12,000 kilometers per hour. Top military planes can travel only about 600 miles per hour.

586

CIA memo 1958.

The CIA has an interest in keeping track of flying saucers, but public relations and community explanations are the responsibility of the Air Force.

Headline reporting Lonnie Zamora's encounter with
an alien craft in 1964 near Soccorro, New Mexico

Years:  1963 - 1969

Declassified Document Summaries

691

U.S. Air Force memo about Lonnie Zamora UFO sighting. 1964.

This is a famous UFO case in which a local, well-respected sheriff walked up to a UFO that was sitting on the ground with several small beings walking around it. When the beings saw Zamora, they got in the craft and took off. This occurred in the desert in New Mexico. This Air Force memo states: "Information obtained during the investigation revealed that the sighting was legitimate and there was no indication that a hoax was being perpetrated."

Sheriff Lonnie Zamora approaches alien craft 

Time Check 
* Louie Louie is Recorded by The Kingsmen 1963. 
* Cassius Clay defeats Sonny Liston to become heavyweight boxing    champ. 1964. 
* The Beatles begin their first American tour. 1964. 
* Astroturf is used for the first time in the Houston Astrodome. 1965. 
* Jimi Hendrix releases his first single "Hey Joe." 1966. 
* Apollo 11 lands on the moon. 1969. 
* Woodstock music festival in upstate New York. 1969. 
* Elvis is back in the studio for the first time since 1955. 1969.

 
692

NICAP memo. Subject: National Investigation Committee on aerial phenomena. 1965.

States that their purpose is to obtain firsthand eyewitness accounts of UFO sightings and send copies of these accounts to various air force bases. The key statement: "We were told that there have been instances where the Air Force has attempted to intimidate witnesses and get them to sign false statements relative to UFO sightings."

693

Department of Defense memo. Subject: announcing the termination of "Project Blue Book." 1969.

Project Blue Book was the "official" Air Force investigation into UFOs. When asked about UFOs government officials always point to this announcement made in 1969. It says the Air Force has investigated UFOs and is no longer interested. Since the Air Force would seem to be the most logical military branch to carry out this investigation, the implication is that UFOs do not exist and that no government agency is investigating them. Wrong! Forget the Air Force! Continue to read through some of the following documents and you will see that virtually every other military branch and all the intelligence agencies keep track of flying saucers.


Cover of Project Blue Book report

Years:   1975 - 1987

Declassified Document Summaries

 
871

National Security Council memo. 1975.

States that we still need to study UFOs so they do not "confuse our early warning systems in case of an attack (by Russia)."

 
872

CIA memo. 1976.

Discusses the effects of magnetic and electromagnetic fields on the astronauts. Key line: "This in turn is related to the possible propulsion systems of UFOs."

 
Time Check  
* The Vietnam War ends. 1975. 
* VHS VCRs are introduced. 1976. 
* Apple introduces the first disk drive for personal computers. 1978. 
* Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi are the "Blues Brothers." 1980. 
* Compact Disc (CD) players are marketed by Sony. 1982. 
* Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones combine to make "Thriller." 1982. 
* The space shuttle Challenger explodes. 1986. 
* Home computers are still rare. The chief executive of a major computer    manufacturing company states there is no need for a home computer. 1987.

Year:   1990

In 1990 there is a dramatic shift in the focus of the intelligence documents now available to the public. The focus becomes the constant UFO sightings occurring in Russia and the rest of Europe, especially Belgium. Here are several CIA and Department of Defense documents that give first-hand accounts of confirmed experiences by Russian military captains.

 
Declassified Document Summaries

 
901

Department of Defense memo and distribution list. Subject: Belgium and the UFO issue.

Remember the memo from 1969 which said the Air Force was no longer interested or involved in UFO investigations? Well, look who IS interested. Start out by reviewing this first document. It is the distribution list for a UFO memo. The subject is UFO sightings in Belgium, a hotbed of UFO activity. Virtually every branch of the military, all the intelligence agencies, the White House, NATO, and various embassies all got a five-page memo about something which supposedly does not exist.

 
Time Check 
* Voyager I sends back to earth the first photograph of our solar system       taken from space.
* Milli Vanilli gets busted for faking it and has to give back their Grammy. 
* The space probe Magellan, launched one year before, reaches Venus.

902

Department of Defense memo. Subject: Soviet Colonel General Maltsev's comments.

Rabochaya Tribuna, a leading Soviet newspaper, states: "Colonel General Maltsev's documents are a substantial confirmation that UFOs piloted by intelligent beings of some sort have been visiting the USSR." Colonel General Igor Maltsev is the chief of the main staff of the Soviet Air Defense Forces. In other words, he is the Top Dog, the guy who runs the entire Air Defense system for Russia.

903

Department of Defense memo. Subject: Japanese expedition to Siberia.

A Russian scientific and industrial journal, Sotsialisticheskkaya Industriyia, describes a Japanese expedition to the site of the Tunguska Meteorite in Siberia. In theory, a great meteorite exploded there in 1908, destroying trees over an area of hundreds of square miles. No meteorite has ever been found. The Japanese research team concluded that the explosion had clearly been caused by the crash of a nuclear-powered spacecraft. The Japanese scientists erected a monument at the site, the first memorial in the USSR to commemorate a UFO. This sounds exciting, but it could have been a meteorite. We now know that meteorites frequently explode just above the earth's surface with the force of an atomic bomb.

Author and science journalist Linda Moulton Howe was told by a military intelligence officer that "Aliens told us (U.S. military) that the explosion at Tunguska was the result of a nuclear-powered engine being accidentally jettisoned from an alien spacecraft."