The CIA UFO Papers

by Dan Wright

  April 27, 1950

  At 6:20 p.m., over central Indiana, a TWA captain, his copilot, the flight attendant, and many passengers watched a dull red object overtake and pace their plane at a distance of half a mile. The pilot later reported:

  We watched it fly parallel to us for 7 or 8 minutes. I couldn't tell its shape, but I'd guess it was roughly 50 feet across. Then (the copilot) said, “Let's get a better look,” and we turned to the right to fly closer. As soon as we did that, the object increased its speed and seemed to turn also, away from us. Then it descended and seemed to disappear among the lights of South Bend.12

  May 11, 1950

  About 7:30 p.m., near the town of McMinnville, Oregon, a farm couple named Trent watched as a flat-bottomed saucer, 20–30 feet across, approached. Grabbing his camera, Mr. Trent took two photos before the saucer accelerated away. In 1967, astronomer William K. Hartman, serving as an investigator for the (UFO debunking) University of Colorado UFO Project, analyzed the negatives and concluded the following:

  This is one of the few UFO reports in which all factors investigated, geometric, psychological, and physical, appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disk-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, i.e., not man-made, flew within sight of two witnesses.13

  June 21, 1950

  At Hamilton Air Force Base, California, three air traffic controllers witnessed a flying disc make at least three passes over the base, emitting a “thunder-like roar.” They followed the craft with binoculars as it buzzed the field at elevations of 2,000–5,000 feet and speeds in excess of 1,000 mph, trailing blue flame “like an acetylene torch.”14

  September 5, 1950

  At 4:09 p.m., while preparing for the annual Farnborough, England, Air Display, an RAF lieutenant was among six officers in the watchtower who caught sight of something unexpected some 10–15 miles distant. (The lieutenant had witnessed the same or an identical object three days earlier.) All described it as a flat disc, light pearl gray in color, its apparent size comparable to a shirt button at arm's length. It followed a fast, rectangular flight path in addition to a “falling leaf” motion—upward as well as downward. Finally, it left for the horizon at great speed.15

  October 15, 1950

  Three security staff at the Atomic Energy Commission facility witnessed the approach of two shiny silver objects at 3:20 p.m. in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Roughly bullet shaped, they dove toward the witnesses, trailing smoke. One simply vanished; the other stopped 5–6 feet above the ground and hovered some 50 feet from the observers. In the ensuing minutes it left and returned several times to spots somewhat farther distant. Eventually it left the area. Project Grudge ruled the intruders unidentified.16

  November 21, 1950

  Wilbert Smith, Director of Project Magnet, the first Canadian government UFO study, wrote a secret memo on “Geo-Magnetics” following a meeting in Washington, D.C. On the subject of UFOs he related:

  The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb. Flying saucers exist. Their modus operandi is unknown but a concentrated effort is being made ... The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be of tremendous significance.17

  Chapter 4

  1951: Calm Before . . .

  For all of calendar year 1951, since-released CIA files were bereft of any documented Agency memo, interagency correspondence, or incoming foreign report concerning unidentified flying objects. Supporting the notion of a drop-off in public interest, the Air Force was reporting ever-reduced numbers of sighting reports.

  Within the USAF and CIA staffs alike, gratitude was no doubt quietly expressed for not having been caught up further in that no-win situation: trying to prove a negative—that every letter to a local newspaper editor, every phone call to the police, airport tower, or radio station was mistaken. There were more than enough credible issues occurring in the world; unusual things seen in the sky were not a necessary concern.

  That attitude would change—shortly and abruptly.

  While you were away from your desk . . .

  February 10, 1951

  At 12:55 a.m., a Douglas RSD four-engine Navy transport, with a second crew plus 31 passengers aboard, was at 10,000 feet on a return flight from Kevlavik, Iceland, to Naval Air Station Argentia, Newfoundland, when a brightly glowing unknown appeared in the distance, 1,000 or 1,500 feet above the water. Suddenly it rose at great speed toward the plane, clarifying its appearance as a disc with reddish orange at the perimeter. Upon its close approach, the plane's hydraulic and magnetic directional gyros began oscillating, along with a magnetic compass and two auto direction finders. The intruder reversed course, zooming into the night as the instruments returned to normal functioning. The crew was extensively debriefed afterward and the pilot was visited months later by an officer from Naval Intelligence who showed him multiple UFO photos, seeking a match.1

  February 26, 1951

  At Ladd Air Force Base, Alaska, a sergeant observed a gray metallic object at 7:10 a.m. He estimated the unknown to be about 120 feet long and 10–12 feet thick. After hovering above the base grounds for over a minute with puffs of smoke escaping, it suddenly sped away. USAF Project Blue Book listed the case as unidentified.2

  August 25, 1951

  About 9:00 p.m., a Sandia Corporation staffer and his wife saw a huge, silent vehicle pass low over them in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They described it as a V-shaped wing with dark stripes and glowing bluish lights along the after edge.

  Twenty minutes later in Lubbock, four Texas Tech professors walking on campus observed a similar shape with 20–30 lights visible. Just over an hour later a second such anomaly passed overhead, followed by a third before midnight. All the groups of lights appeared suddenly, high above the horizon, and disappeared just as abruptly. The next morning a nearby Air Defense Command radar station reported that two sets of equipment had reported an unknown target moving 900 mph at 13,000 feet. An F-86 Sabrejet was scrambled, but too late. On the 31st a college freshman and amateur photographer took five photos to the newspaper office—what became famously known as the Lubbock Lights.3

  Undetermined Date, 1951

  Future astronaut L. Gordon Cooper scrambled his F-84 Thunderjet into the sky from Neubiberg AFB, Germany. He and his fellow pilots expected to confront MiG-15s, which frequently crossed over the border. Instead, as they reached their maximum altitude of 45,000 feet, well ahead of and above them, and traveling far faster were multiple unknowns.

  I could see that they weren't balloons or MiGs or like any aircraft I had seen before. They were metallic silver and saucer-shaped. We couldn't get close enough to form any idea of their size; they were just too high.4

  Chapter 5

  1952: A Genuine Wave

  As the calendar flipped to 1952, the United States found itself knee-deep in yet another war—this time in Korea, undeclared by Congress. Manufacturers were back to building Jeeps and artillery even as new models of Fords, Chevys, and Packards rolled off assembly lines. Harry Truman entered the final year of his presidency hugely unpopular, his candid and unrefined personal style not nearly the winner it would become in retrospect. Jim Crow would remain, in practice, the law of the land across the South for another decade and more. Plus, the potential for a nuclear-tipped Russian ICBM pervaded the American public's consciousness.

  While decisive victories over the Nazis and Japanese were a source of great American pride, the world was now a more complicated place geopolitically; the period of binary wartime political philosophies was over now. Analyzing a hodgepodge of critical intelligence data from multivarious sources dominated the Agency's attention.

  In the midst of that hubbub of activity arrived an official yet enigmatic Information Report originating in the Uzbek Republic of the Soviet Union—later Uzbekistan. The report was dated February 11, 1952, but it concerned events dating from May into September
1947.

  From a work camp 50 km southwest of the capital, Tashkent, a worker claimed that three (in modern UFO parlance) nocturnal lights moved across the sky about 15 minutes apart, between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m., nearly every night from May into September 1947. He implied it was common knowledge among the rest of the workers.1 Recall, the Kenneth Arnold sighting of flying saucers in the Cascade Mountains took place in the final week of June 1947; the Roswell, New Mexico crash—a cornerstone of any UFO discussion—was traced to the first week of July.

  The early-May peak of the Eta Aquarids and mid-August's Perseids peak, both major meteor showers, might be suspects for the Uzbek activity. But it was improbable at best that the early- and late-date meteors associated with those showers, visible for a second or less as streaks of light, were responsible. The notion of a comet also had to be dispelled; to the ground observer's eye, over a given hour a comet always appears stationary.

  The Agency's source detailed the informant's nightly observations, in the company of others, in far different terms: A dark-red ball of fire was seen first; after about six seconds it reached the apex of a long, drawn-out trajectory. During this time the ball developed a trail of fire. Its color, which was bright red at the apex, changed from pale green to white. No smoke trails, noises, or detonations were noticed. In apparent size to the eye, each unexplained light was reportedly about one-fifth the diameter of a full moon. The lights' trajectory was generally from southwest to northeast.

  If taken at face value, the work crew witnessed something unexplained in either astronomical or meteorological circles. Operating in anti-communist mode, CIA analysts no doubt entertained notions of long-range Soviet artillery or rocketry as strong possibilities. No published Agency records support that contention, but alas, for want of a follow-up record the world will never know.

  After what had been an absolutely quiet 1951—at least in terms of the CIA's recorded interest in UFOs—official files on the subject rose inexplicably across 1952 to include thirty formal communications to, from, or within the Agency on the flying saucer subject.

  With one of its wordy, catchall form titles, the CIA had developed an open-ended retrieval document for such communication purposes: Information from Foreign Documents or Radio Broadcasts—the IFDRB. The foreign documents in question were usually newspaper articles.

  On March 29, 1952, a Vienna, Austria, daily paper published what became an IFDRB file titled “Flying Saucers over Belgian Congo Uranium Mines.” It was distributed more widely across the Defense Department in August. Allegedly, two fiery discs glided through many turns over the mines in Elisabethville District (date uncertain) for 10–12 minutes, then suddenly left in a zigzag fashion, emitting a hissing-buzzing sound. A nearby pilot and military commander jumped into his jet and chased the unknowns, reportedly coming within 120 meters of one. He described it as 12–15 meters in diameter, the color of aluminum. The undercarriage rotated at great speed and emitted a fiery effect, he said. The intruding vehicles left in unison at greater than Mach 1.

  Following a two-month calm on such matters, warm-weather reports would cause the hair on the collective necks of Agency analysts to stand on end.

  June 1, 2:40 a.m., at Port Gentil on the coast of the west African nation of Gabon, the master and first mate of a cargo ship at anchor saw an orange luminous object rise up behind the port, do two right-angle turns, pass overhead, and continue out of sight.2

  On July 9, 1952, a newspaper in Athens, Greece, published an article titled “Flying Saucers in East Germany.” A former village mayor who had escaped East Germany with his family related an incident that occurred at some unspecified time while they were on the Soviet side. At dusk, he and his 11-year-old daughter were returning home on his motorcycle when it blew a tire. As he was tending to the flat, the daughter called his attention to something odd some 140 meters away in a wooded area. They were curious enough to investigate. When within about 40 meters, the father realized what they'd seen initially was actually two “men” dressed in “shiny metallic clothing.” One of them had a “lamp on the front of his body, which lit up at regular intervals.”

  Apparently unnoticed, father and daughter continued through the trees toward the men. Just ten meters short of them, he discovered a round metallic object on the ground beyond in a clearing. It had the overall shape of a handle-less frying pan. He estimated it to be 13–15 meters in diameter. Two rows of holes, just under a foot in diameter each, were spaced around its periphery. Atop the saucer body was a black conical tower three meters high. As he continued to examine it, his daughter spoke to him. This drew the attention of the intruders, who immediately scampered into the tower and disappeared.

  The object rose slowly from the ground at first, the father continued in his later testimony. It was surrounded by a ring of flames. Intermittently they heard a slight hum plus a whistling sound similar to that of World War II bombs dropping. Seconds later the object accelerated rapidly into the sky and was gone. The witnesses found a fresh depression in the ground matching the vehicle's diameter. For good measure, the father swore to all of his observations under oath in court.3

  If UFO reports were only grudgingly and barely considered by American officialdom, they were both commonplace and openly speculated on elsewhere. Algeria was host to numerous events during July.

  On July 11 at Lamoriciere, a man noticed an apparent meteor followed by two other bodies, all trailing yellowish smoke. These vanished and a longish fiery oval appeared from nowhere then moved out of sight.

  Four nights later, at approximately 11:00 p.m. at Boukanefis, two bakers saw a plate-shaped object move across the sky with unusual agility, emitting greenish smoke that lit the air.

  On or around July 25 at 2:35 p.m., several workers at an Algiers factory and elsewhere saw a luminous white mass glide across the sky. Two minutes later a newsman and two others saw a brilliant disc flying at great speed over the coastal city of Oran.

  That late evening at Lodi, southwest of Algiers, at 11:30 p.m., a yellowish object crossed the sky at great speed. Twenty minutes later a larger inverted cone was observed.

  The next morning, July 26, at 10:45 a.m. in Tiaret, five persons saw a shining cigar-shaped mass with a darkened center silently traverse the sky.

  That same night at 11:30, three women at Eckmühl spotted a red-orange “patch” of sky in a flattened-egg shape that left momentarily after the sighting.

  On the morning of July 30, an Algiers resident observed a shining black disc on the horizon; it ascended vertically then suddenly moved horizontally out of sight. That night at Sainte Barbe du Tlelat, two policemen, a judge, and a lawyer saw a luminous unknown in the sky.

  The same night, at 3:30 a.m., July 31, an object was observed at Oued Taria, making right-angle turns. At 4:00 a.m., an object trailing whitish smoke was seen at Tlemcen, likewise executing impossible turns. Several hours later at 11:30 a.m. back in Oran, a couple driving outside the city watched a tapered spindle shape cross the sky at great speed.4

  In the midst of Algeria's sightings, in the Netherlands, during late July, a woman and her four children, ages 10–16, reportedly witnessed a formation of discs in view for long minutes as the objects passed slowly overhead:

  On July 24 at about 6:30 p.m., presumably a big formation of “Flying Saucers” was seen above Arnhem. Together they saw the unknowns coming in “V” formation from the North. They could see them for several minutes before the anomalies suddenly disappeared to the South.5

  UFOs were seemingly ubiquitous, including multiple ventures over metropolitan Washington, D.C., in the latter half of July 1952, when separate radars detected unknowns also observed by pilots and from the ground. Curiously, no report of those events was included in the Agency's official record.

  Unfamiliar objects were said to have appeared over Barcelona, Spain, and Sousse, Tunisia, that summer. Many Moroccan citizens claimed sightings at Meknes, Taourirt, Marrakesh, and Casablanca.6

  In Roseville, Michigan (a
Detroit suburb), on April 27, 1952, a minister and three other adults witnessed three aerial events in 45 minutes. At 4:45 p.m., a silver oval tumbled, descended, hovered, then flew away. Soon two silver cylinders, followed by one more, meandered about the area and departed at high speed. The same day at Yuma, Arizona, an off-duty control tower operator and his wife had eight sightings of bright red or flame-colored discs in a two-hour period. Seven were of a single object, one of two that were identical in appearance. All occurred below an 11,000-foot overcast. USAF Project Blue Book left both cases unidentified.7

  At 9:10 a.m., May 1, 1952, over Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, two shiny round objects overtook a B-36 Peacemaker bomber in flight. The intruders paced the bomber for some 20 seconds, turned an impossible 70–80 degrees and accelerated away. Before reaching the horizon, one stopped suddenly without decelerating. No contrail was seen and no sound heard from the unknowns. The incident was observed in flight by the bomber crew, from the ground by an airman, and also by the Air Intelligence major in charge of analyzing local UFO sightings by the public. Somehow their written reports became lost. USAF Project Blue Book listed the case as a misidentified aircraft.8