posted on Jun, 17 2004 @ 07:22 AM
CIA's
Role in the Study of UFOs: 1947-1990
Report by Gerald K. Haines for the Central Intelligence Agency
An extraordinary
95 percent of all Americans have at least heard or read something about
Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), and 57 percent believe they are
real. (1) Former US Presidents Carter and Reagan
claim to have seen a UFO. UFOlogists--a neologism for UFO buffs--and
private UFO organizations are found throughout the United States. Many
are convinced that the US Government, and particularly CIA, are engaged
in a massive conspiracy and coverup of the issue. The idea that the
CIA has secretly concealed its research into UFOs has been a major theme
of UFO buffs since the modern UFO phenomena emerged in the late 1940s. (2)
In late
1993, after being pressured by UFOlogists for the release of additional
CIA information on UFOs, (3) DCI
R. James Woolsey ordered another review of all Agency files on UFOs.
Using CIA records compiled from that review, this study traces CIA interest
and involvement in the UFO controversy from the late 1940s to 1990.
It chronologically examines the Agency's efforts to solve the mystery
of UFOs, its programs that had an impact on UFO sightings, and its attempts
to conceal CIA involvement in the entire UFO issue. What emerges from
this examination is that, while Agency concern over UFOs was substantial
until the early 1950s, CIA has since paid only limited and peripheral
attention to the phenomena.
Background
The emergence
in 1947 of the Cold War confrontation between the United States and
the Soviet Union also saw the first wave of UFO sightings. The first
report of a "flying saucer" over the United States came on 24 June 1947,
when Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot and reputable businessman, while
looking for a downed plane sighted nine disk-shaped objects near Mt.
Rainier, Washington, traveling at an estimated speed of over 1,000 mph.
Arnold's report was followed by a flood of additional sightings, including
reports from military and civilian pilots and air traffic controllers
all over the United States. (4) In
1948, Air Force Gen. Nathan Twining, head of the Air Technical Service
Command, established Project SIGN (initially named Project SAUCER) to
collect, collate, evaluate, and distribute within the government all
information relating to such sightings, on the premise that UFOs might
be real and of national security concern. (5)
The Technical
Intelligence Division of the Air Material Command (AMC) at Wright Field
(later Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Dayton, Ohio, assumed control
of Project SIGN and began its work on 23 January 1948. Although at first
fearful that the objects might be Soviet secret weapons, the Air Force
soon concluded that UFOs were real but easily explained and not extraordinary.
The Air Force report found that almost all sightings stemmed from one
or more of three causes: mass hysteria and hallucination, hoax, or misinterpretation
of known objects. Nevertheless, the report recommended continued military
intelligence control over the investigation of all sightings and did
not rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial phenomena. (6)
Amid mounting
UFO sightings, the Air Force continued to collect and evaluate UFO data
in the late 1940s under a new project, GRUDGE, which tried to alleviate
public anxiety over UFOs via a public relations campaign designed to
persuade the public that UFOs constituted nothing unusual or extraordinary.
UFO sightings were explained as balloons, conventional aircraft, planets,
meteors, optical illusions, solar reflections, or even "large hailstones."
GRUDGE officials found no evidence in UFO sightings of advanced foreign
weapons design or development, and they concluded that UFOs did not
threaten US security. They recommended that the project be reduced in
scope because the very existence of Air Force official interest encouraged
people to believe in UFOs and contributed to a "war hysteria" atmosphere.
On 27 December 1949, the Air Force announced the project's termination. (7)
With increased
Cold War tensions, the Korean war, and continued UFO sightings, USAF
Director of Intelligence Maj. Gen. Charles P. Cabell ordered a new UFO
project in 1952. Project BLUE BOOK became the major Air Force effort
to study the UFO phenomenon throughout the 1950s and 1960s. (8) The
task of identifying and explaining UFOs continued to fall on the Air
Material Command at Wright-Patterson. With a small staff, the Air Technical
Intelligence Center (ATIC) tried to persuade the public that UFOs were
not extraordinary. (9) Projects
SIGN, GRUDGE, and BLUE BOOK set the tone for the official US Government
position regarding UFOs for the next 30 years.
Early
CIA Concerns, 1947-52
CIA closely
monitored the Air Force effort, aware of the mounting number of sightings
and increasingly concerned that UFOs might pose a potential security
threat. (10) Given
the distribution of the sightings, CIA officials in 1952 questioned
whether they might reflect "midsummer madness.'' (11) Agency
officials accepted the Air Force's conclusions about UFO reports, although
they concluded that "since there is a remote possibility that they may
be interplanetary aircraft, it is necessary to investigate each sighting." (12)
A massive
buildup of sightings over the United States in 1952, especially in July,
alarmed the Truman administration. On 19 and 20 July, radar scopes at
Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base tracked mysterious
blips. On 27 July, the blips reappeared. The Air Force scrambled interceptor
aircraft to investigate, but they found nothing. The incidents, however,
caused headlines across the country. The White House wanted to know
what was happening, and the Air Force quickly offered the explanation
that the radar blips might be the result of "temperature inversions."
Later, a Civil Aeronautics Administration investigation confirmed that
such radar blips were quite common and were caused by temperature inversions. (13)
Although
it had monitored UFO reports for at least three years, CIA reacted to
the new rash of sightings by forming a special study group within the
Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and the Office of Current Intelligence
(OCI) to review the situation. (14)
Edward Tauss, acting chief of OSI's Weapons and Equipment Division,
reported for the group that most UFO sightings could be easily explained.
Nevertheless, he recommended that the Agency continue monitoring the
problem, in coordination with ATIC. He also urged that CIA conceal its
interest from the media and the public, "in view of their probable alarmist
tendencies" to accept such interest as confirming the existence of UFOs. (15)
Upon receiving
the report, Deputy Director for Intelligence (DDI) Robert Amory, Jr.
assigned responsibility for the UFO investigations to OSI's Physics
and Electronics Division, with A. Ray Gordon as the officer in charge. (16)
Each branch in the division was to contribute to the investigation,
and Gordon was to coordinate closely with ATIC. Amory, who asked the
group to focus on the national security implications of UFOs, was relaying
DCI Walter Bedell Smith's concerns. (17) Smith
wanted to know whether or not the Air Force investigation of flying
saucers was sufficiently objective and how much more money and manpower
would be necessary to determine the cause of the small percentage of
unexplained flying saucers. Smith believed "there was only one chance
in 10,000 that the phenomenon posed a threat to the security of the
country, but even that chance could not be taken." According to Smith,
it was CIA's responsibility by statute to coordinate the intelligence
effort required to solve the problem. Smith also wanted to know what
use could be made of the UFO phenomenon in connection with US psychological
warfare efforts. (18)
Led by
Gordon, the CIA Study Group met with Air Force officials at Wright-Patterson
and reviewed their data and findings. The Air Force claimed that 90
percent of the reported sightings were easily accounted for. The other
10 percent were characterized as "a number of incredible reports from
credible observers." The Air Force rejected the theories that the sightings
involved US or Soviet secret weapons development or that they involved
"men from Mars"; there was no evidence to support these concepts. The
Air Force briefers sought to explain these UFO reports as the misinterpretation
of known objects or little understood natural phenomena. (19) Air
Force and CIA officials agreed that outside knowledge of Agency interest
in UFOs would make the problem more serious. (20) This
concealment of CIA interest contributed greatly to later charges of
a CIA conspiracy and coverup.
Amateur
photographs of alleged UFOs
Passoria,
New Jersey, 31 July 1952
Sheffield,
England, 4 March 1962
& Minneapolis, Minnesota, 20 October 1960
The CIA
Study Group also searched the Soviet press for UFO reports, but found
none, causing the group to conclude that the absence of reports had
to have been the result of deliberate Soviet Government policy. The
group also envisioned the USSR's possible use of UFOs as a psychological
warfare tool. In addition, they worried that, if the US air warning
system should be deliberately overloaded by UFO sightings, the Soviets
might gain a surprise advantage in any nuclear attack. (21)
Because
of the tense Cold War situation and increased Soviet capabilities, the
CIA Study Group saw serious national security concerns in the flying
saucer situation. The group believed that the Soviets could use UFO
reports to touch off mass hysteria and panic in the United States. The
group also believed that the Soviets might use UFO sightings to overload
the US air warning system so that it could not distinguish real targets
from phantom UFOs. H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of OSI,
added that he considered the problem of such importance "that it should
be brought to the attention of the National Security Council, in order
that a communitywide coordinated effort towards it solution may be initiated." (22)
Chadwell
briefed DCI Smith on the subject of UFOs in December 1952. He urged
action because he was convinced that "something was going on that must
have immediate attention" and that "sightings of unexplained objects
at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major
US defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable
to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles." He drafted
a memorandum from the DCI to the National Security Council (NSC) and
a proposed NSC Directive establishing the investigation of UFOs as a
priority project throughout the intelligence and the defense research
and development community. (23) Chadwell
also urged Smith to establish an external research project of top-level
scientists to study the problem of UFOs. (24) After
this briefing, Smith directed DDI Amory to prepare a NSC Intelligence
Directive (NSCID) for submission to the NSC on the need to continue
the investigation of UFOs and to coordinate such investigations with
the Air Force. (25)