UFOs: CIA declassified files published online

THE world’s most notorious intelligence agency has released a bunch of documents about UFOs. Here’s what they reveal.

THE world’s most high profile intelligence agency has released a raft of declassified documents which detail UFO sightings.

The CIA documents, which have recently been published online, are taken from several sightings made in the ’40s and ’50s.

In a post on its blog page, the CIA has brought to light the once top secret documents which include flying saucer sightings, minutes of top level meetings, as well as scientific evidence to dispute the existence of extraterrestrial life.

“To help navigate the vast amount of data contained in our FOIA UFO collection, we’ve decided to highlight a few documents both sceptics and believers will find interesting,” the agency’s blog explains.

In a massive nod to X-Files characters Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, the agency has even compared their documents to the hit TV show, with the headline “Take a peak into our X-Files” and ends its post with “the truth is out there.”

This sighting in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in October 1960, sent UFO enthusiasts into a spin.

The blog then lists five documents that X-Files FBI agents Mulder and Scully would both love to get their hands on, including flying saucers over East Germany in 1952, and a similar sighting which took place in Spain and North Africa in 1952.

It even has tips on how UFO spotters can investigate their own flying saucer case.

The documents are among hundreds which were declassified by the CIA during the 1970s. While they have been publicly available for years, it is the first time the agency has posted them on its own website.

However, UFO fans and conspiracy theorists may be disappointed to learn there is no mention of any Roswell document.

Move along there’s nothing to see here, except this model of an alien on display inside the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell.

In 1947 a US Air Force balloon crashed into the ground in the New Mexico city, sparking a raft of conspiracy theories that the incident was covered up by the US government who were accused by some of hiding evidence of alien life.

With the X-Files back on our screens, it is not known if the CIA are looking to cash in on the publicity surrounding the show or if it is just coincidence.

Whether you are a sceptic or a believer, the documents make for fascinating reading.

David Duchovny as FBI agent Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson as Dana Scully in the hit TV show the X-Files. The CIA has released its own X-Files cases.

FLYING SAUCERS

In 1952, West Berlin intelligence officers investigated a “most unusual flying saucer story” after an “object resembling a huge frying pan” about 15m wide landed in a forest clearing in the Soviet zone of Germany.

Oscar Linke, a former mayor, spotted the object after recently escaping the Soviet Zone with his wife and six children and goes into great detail of what he saw.

The sighting occurred during the Cold War (1947-91) when political tensions between the East and West were high and spying on both sides was rife.

The flying saucer sighting in East Germany, 1952, took place during the Cold War. Picture: CIA.

SECRET MEETINGS

The minutes taken from a Branch Chief’s meeting of August 11, 1952 also reveal an insight into how UFO sightings were to be investigated.

Minutes from one meeting recommend how a project should be started on Flying Saucers to investigate such sightings, how record keeping should take place as well as how the branch gives its information to the CIA.

One of the documents which details minutes of a meeting.

While sightings make up the believer category, the CIA has naturally included five documents for the cynic in all of us, including the findings from a Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects dated January 14-17, 1953.

According to the document several sightings including those made in Belfontaine, Ohio (1952), Tremonton, Utah (1952) and Port Huron, Michigan (1952) all lacked sound data and had a reasonable explanation behind them.

The scientific explanation behind possible sightings. Picture: CIA.

Those which couldn’t be reasonably explained were dismissed on the basis that they were either too quick to get exact details, or witnesses couldn’t properly relay what they saw.

It also goes on to reveal the Air Force often over reported objects due to public pressure, and the panel could not find “any evidence that related the objects sighted to space travellers”.

A UFO investigation in Socorro, New Mexico. Picture: CIA

‘NATIONAL PROBLEM’

Another official document highlights that flying saucers pose two elements of danger which “have national security implications”.

The Memorandum to the CIA Director on Flying Saucers, dated October 2, 1952, document also recommends that further research and take place on the “flying saucer problem”.