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CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents
- jonnyweirdteeth 11y agoGood to see that the CIA has a little bit of a sense of humor about this kind of thing. What a PR coup by the X-files reboot, as well.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- zingermc 11y agoI love that part at the bottom that says "Do you want to believe?".
- legohead 11y agoThe CIA twitter feed [1] is pretty cool. This isn't them just taking advantage of X-files, their social media was already pretty good. [1] https://twitter.com/CIA https://twitter.com/CIA
- derefr 11y agoFrom this perennial-on-HN article (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-w...): > At this time [the CIA], staffed mainly by Yale and Harvard graduates, many of whom collected art and wrote novels in their spare time, was a haven of liberalism when compared with a political world dominated by McCarthy or with J Edgar Hoover's FBI. If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA. If that culture has persisted to any degree, then the CIA is probably the most "geeky" government department we've got, second only to perhaps NASA.
- _jomo 11y agoTheir first tweet is hilarious: https://mobile.twitter.com/CIA/status/474971393852182528 https://mobile.twitter.com/CIA/status/474971393852182528
- Aqueous 11y agoThey declassified them in 1978. So these documents have been publicly available for a mere 37 years. Figures - what else are they hiding that they aren't hiding?
- vidyesh 11y agoCorrect me if I am wrong. I don't think all declassified documents are publicly available. They sure will be produced if requested upon but I doubt all of them are just available to download as soon as they get declassified.
- davidbanham 11y agoAll the documents that appear startling are actually just recounts of stories that appeared in a daily newspaper, marked as completely unsubstantiated.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- themagician 11y agoThe truth is… still out there.
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- ilovefood 11y agoI wonder why those numbers don't add up :>
- notthegov 11y agoIf you want to understand the UFO story better, you should watch Mirage Men about Air Force Office of Special Investigations Agent Richard Doty, a self-admitted UFO disinformation agent- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6naKTTuBq14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6naKTTuBq14 The intelligence agencies aren't hiding anything about UFOs from my experience. And I don't really think the USAF is either. But the USAF did tell various people that UFOs were real and they did run a psychological operation against Paul Bennewitz, destroying his life and forever obsfucating whatever truth there is about UFOs. (None in my opinion.) Here's a good summary: http://www.openminds.tv/open-letter-u-s-air-force-allegations-ufo-disinformation/27071 http://www.openminds.tv/open-letter-u-s-air-force-allegation... *Fixed link
- c0nducktr 11y agoYou linked a different movie for the Mirage Men trailer. The correct link is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6naKTTuBq14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6naKTTuBq14
- kilroy123 11y agoHere's my tin-foil-hat theory on UFO's. The whole idea of a UFOs and flying saucers was a kooky ass idea from the US government to spook the Soviets into thinking, the US actually had in their possessions aliens, and futuristic alien technology. It is too coincidental the first reports of flying saucers came in the late 40s. When the cold war first started to heat up. I think the Soviets actually bought it up and the government (CIA?) kept running with it. Why not? It was probably a cheap and effective way psychologically mess with the Soviets.
- api 11y agoThat isn't particularly outlandish. The Red Mercury hoax is pretty well documented and very similar: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/magazine/the-doomsday-scam.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/22/magazine/the-doomsday-scam... The whole thing might have been a great way to 'out' spies (by tracing information flow) and generally confuse and psych out the Soviets.
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- tannranger 11y agothe silence is deafening
- Someone1234 11y agoHonestly even if you don't believe in aliens visiting earth (and I do not), these documents are still an interesting read. Just seeing how they investigated and the investigators opinions/thoughts/methods was quite interesting to me. Some more than others, some are very short and only contain a witness statement.
- jedberg 11y agoYou have to hand it to the CIA for taking advantage of the XFiles reboot to boost their social media a bit. Especially on 37 year old documents!
- mcv 11y agoIt's fun and maybe slightly disconcerting to see the CIA handle its job with humour.
- robwilliams 11y agoThis was likely the work of the web master or a PR person; I doubt a CIA agent wrote it.
- x3n0ph3n3 11y agoCome on guys, stop conflating UFOs with alien spacecraft. UFOs are real, alien spacecraft are probably not.
- myth_buster 11y agoI found the documentary "I know what I saw"[0][1] rather interesting. In this Mercury 7 astronaut, former pilots, retired air force officers, Major Generals etc give account of UFO sightings. Although produced by History Channel, it features only accounts of these distinguished people and recollect no spin (if my memory serves me right). [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTEZeY-fNCU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTEZeY-fNCU [1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1579236/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1579236/
- fsloth 11y agoHuman brains are really poor at interpreting new brief visual stimulus "correctly". Furthermore, our first impression can affect the perception of the stimulus even if it lasts several seconds. I'm 36, and visually quite acute. I've seen my visual system doing the craziest interpretations in various situation, and observed my interpretation of a visual field completely changed by a sudden re-interpretation of some small detail. Given proper conditions I could have interpreted these as apparitions, ghosts, materializations or whatnot. The difference is, all of these situations happened in calm mundane situations where I had the luxury to pause and look at the thing for a long while and figure it out. The craziest was a low-lit room where I saw the patterns of a carpet as my son, walking. I had woken at night and presumed it was because my kid was awake. When I came closer I realized it was the carpet. If I can mistake a rug for a human being I do not find it unlikely that a pilot trained to be aware of bogeys to interpret unexpected stimulus first as a vehicle (this interpretation is very hard to shake off).
- jobu 11y agoObligatory xkcd link: https://m.xkcd.com/1235/ https://m.xkcd.com/1235/ "In the past few years, with very little fanfare, we've conclusively settled the questions of flying saucers, lake monsters, ghosts, and bigfoot."
- jimrandomh 11y agoI'm surprised they're continuing the misdirection so many years later. "Unidentified flying object" means an aircraft, usually a military one (because civilian aircraft are easier to identify). A UFO over US soil would usually be a USAF plane, but the CIA ran (runs?) a reporting hotline because they might occasionally be foreign spy planes instead. But of course, the Soviets were very interested (or the US believed they were very interested) in knowing about US military planes and their capabilities. There's an anecdote I recall reading - I apologize for not having the link handy - about how, at Area 51 (their airfield for testing experimental aircraft), they would leave big airplane-shaped objects on the tarmac to create cold spots for Soviets' spy satellites to photograph in infrared, corresponding to planes that didn't exist. The reason I'm unable to find that anecdote is because the search term "Area 51", combined with any other search terms, brings up an enormous a flood of incoherent crackpot ramblings. I'm pretty sure this is the result of a deliberate strategy: create a bunch of fake information, so that real information about US military capabilities will be harder to find. A few hints and a few taunts, and voila, every discussion about unidentified aircraft is guaranteed to have a schizophrenic walk in and start rambling about aliens!
- tomphoolery 11y agoI remember hearing about this in a documentary, actually...so you might not be able to find the link because it doesn't exist on the Internet. :)
- miracle_code 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage_Men https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage_Men This one?
- cmiles74 11y agoI read a history of Area 51 that had several interesting stories in a similar vein. The book struck me as down-to-earth and well researched. http://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/dp/0316202304 http://www.amazon.com/Area-51-Uncensored-Americas-Military/d...
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- ChuckMcM 11y agoI really enjoyed those. I particularly like some of the descriptions. In the early 80's I worked in the Image Processing Institute at USC where one of hte UFO shows had us analyze some of the "best" photographs (at that time) of UFO sitings. We pulled all sorts of fun stuff out of the pictures, like the letters "9 oz" on the bottom of a pie plate type UFO, "old skool" photo doctoring where someone had taken the picture of a "ufo" and literally placed it on top of a picture of the sky, and then re-photographed the composite. As I recall there was only one picture we could not definitively rule out as a fake. But my best memory of that project was when the producer asked the camera man to get some footage of the "computer" and when he pointed it at the 11/55t front panel the producer said, "No, the computer!" and pointed at the tape drives. I knew we had top shelf folks on the team at that point :-)
- toupeira 11y agoTitle is misleading, text starts with "The CIA declassified hundreds of documents in 1978"
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- Laaw 11y agoWhy does everyone always assume the government would hide aliens from the public?
- ddingus 11y agoI have wondered about that myself. One plausible argument centers on overall stability. Most of the public would be fine with it, but that slice of the public that would not be fine could be a big worry. However, I do not believe the secret would hold. It would be too important. Someone would leak. Way too many of us would really want to know and find it all fascinating.
- krapp 11y agoJust because (theoretically) the government knows (or can't discredit the possibility) of UFOs being alien craft, doesn't mean they know where they come from, what they want or how to stop them. Revealing that beings from an unknown origin were violating our airspace at will, with technology we can't comprehend, doing whatever they wanted to people, messing with our military hardware, etc, and that there was absolutely nothing anyone could do about it, might create a panic and destroy that government's credibility.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- Laaw 11y agoWhy would it create a panic and destroy a government's credibility? Obviously you don't make that announcement unless you have proof, but I've heard the "cause a panic" argument thousands of times, but never understood it. Why would it actually cause a panic, and what would this panic take the form of? Let me put it another way: we can imagine all kinds of horrible scenarios, but what evidence do we actually have that society would crumble upon learning of beings from other planets?
- dangerboysteve 11y agoCouldn't they have coordinated with this the lunch of the new X-Files? Fox marketing sucks!
- pjaytipp 11y agoReports of strange new energies & crafts also made science seem magical and helped fire the imagination of the next generation of scientists and engineers for the ongoing cold war. The UFO phenomenon was handy on a few fronts.
- DanielBMarkham 11y agoI love UFOs because UFOs tell us a lot about how we deal with non-reproducible observations. Walk outside and see a green, glowing light that hovers then disappears? You can walk outside again for the rest of your life and never see it again. Does that mean you didn't see anything? Of course not. This really messes with people's heads. The rationalists will say that since we can't independently observe it, it might as well not exist. Folks who have a deep mythology as part of their worldview will simply incorporate their observation into their mythology. Even cooler is the fact that something is obviously going on that we can't categorize or figure out. (See thunderstorm sprites and jets as a recent example). Is it one phenomenon? Highly unlikely. But beats me how many different and really cool things there are out there to discover. I'm sure some of these may take hundreds of years to nail down, if ever. And then the government gets involved and -- get this -- starts deliberately fucking with people about it. Hey, that wasn't a new stealth bomber, that was probably aliens. While it may have confused the Soviets, it was also a deliberate attempt to mislead the voters. I'm not a constitutional expert but seems to me the one thing that ought to carry the severest penalty is government officials in a democracy deliberately trying to mislead the public about critical issues. And then we have them pawning their B.S. off on mentally ill people. Nice. Very classy. UFOs tell us a lot more about ourselves than they do anything from another planet. Unfortunately, much of what they tell us is rather unpleasant.
- krapp 11y ago> I'm not a constitutional expert but seems to me the one thing that ought to carry the severest penalty is government officials in a democracy deliberately trying to mislead the public about critical issues. There's nothing in the constitution that requires the government to reveal the existence of classified projects to the public. Would you expect the Air Force to admit that "yes, actually, that's our new stealth plane, the SR-71 Blackbird, don't tell the Soviets" when someone sees one?
- rhino369 11y agoOur American government was never based on the idea that the people would have direct input on all issues. We elect leaders (not followers) to run the country. They probably shouldn't keep fundamental facts about government from us. But lying about our first strike nuclear capabilities to get an edge is understandable. That's why it's important to vote not just for a platform but for the candidate. Because they'll be dealing with issues that aren't known, be them hidden or just yet to surface. Especially for president. Our president is modeled after a limited monarch, just with an limited term.
- samstave 11y agoMy first UFO story: I was ~13 years old in The Civil Ait Patrol, this occurred in Truckee, Ca at the Truckee Airport. We were doing standard marching exercises and our troop leader was a former SR-71 mechanic/maint person... It was a full moon - and as our gatherings typically started after 5PM - it got dark fairly quickly. We were marching and then looking to the mountain line in the horizon, we saw a light come up over the mountain line and fly vertically up at a steady clip as it was near the moon which had also just risen over the ridge. We all watched, speculating what type of plane this was (Civil Air Patrol was like the cub scouts for the air force) As we watched and guessed, this craft flew straight up from the mountain - then directly toward us. I came to a complete hover just above us by about 300 feet. The craft was the classic triangular shape with large round whit lights at each corner. As it hovered - the troop leader said "OK KIDS - EVERYONE INSIDE NOW!!!" and he ushered us into the end of the hangar building that had our CAP office. Ever since then.... I've had an interesting relationship with believing UFOs...
- lsadam0 11y agoKinda sounds like the long rumored TR-3B ( http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/tr-3b/ http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/tr-3b/ ). I love UFO mythology, and that around the TR-3B is wild, to say the least.
- jack9 11y agoDuring a summer break jaunt to see the American Flag Art Exhibit in 1996 (found it! http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/08/us/art-or-trash-arizona-exhibit-on-american-flag-unleashes-a-controversy.html http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/08/us/art-or-trash-arizona-ex...), I was coming back down the 10 just past Wiley's Rest Stop, in California and pulled off the road into the desert about 500 yards from the highway. It was me with my best friend (from kindergarten) and 2 sisters we were mutually involved with. No drugs, no alcohol, no cell phones, and some remaining film in a disposable did nothing in a pitch black night. Playing truth or dare around a makeshift fire, one sister saw 3 lights moving toward us. It took awhile to wrap our heads around what it was, till it was blocking out stars. I have been on aircraft carriers and cruise ships prior. This thing blocked out a lot of the sky, as it passed silently overhead. It was either equivalent (but larger in surface area) to an aircraft carrier or larger than a couple city blocks if it was higher (impossible to tell how high it was in the pitch black desert). We killed the fire pretty quick, but it just passed silently overhead without further incident. It flew on toward the southeast over a the mountains in the distance. Unlike a lot of other videos and reports, there was no center light (red or otherwise).
- sandworm101 11y agoHow much money does it take to get a US agency to issue a blog post in support of a TV series? Granted, those in charge of the CIA blog are probably the right age to be die hard Xfiles fans, but after the StarWars promotion at the white house I'm seeing lobbyists everywhere.
- chippy 11y agoCIA is there to support the country overseas. To actively promote a major TV Series which will lead to jobs, money coming into the company, potentially increased goodwill to the country is exactly their mission. One thing to remember with spying these days is that the nation spy agencies these day spy for corporations, because if the companies do well then the country does well.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- codenut 11y agoOdd thing. I just watched the new X-Files last night and this kind of news is on HN frontpage the next morning.
- crapolasplatter 11y ago"Below you will find five documents we think X-Files character Agent Fox Mulder would love to use to try and persuade others of the existence of extraterrestrial activity. We also pulled five documents we think his skeptical partner, Agent Dana Scully, could use to prove there is a scientific explanation for UFO sightings." The most interesting thing about this is the lack of seriousness that the CIA puts into UFO.
- isaiahg 11y agoAt this point we're pretty settled that alien life probably exists in some form out there. Whether that alien life could evolve to create technology and build spacecraft is another thing. But the even bigger thing is when you take into account just how vast the distances involved are. It's just so unlikely that alien life could exist, develop technology, and then be in the same neighborhood as us.
- Houshalter 11y agoNot really unlikely if you consider the vast scale of time as well. A few million years is enough to reach the end of the galaxy even at very very low percent of the speed of light. That's a long time in our terms, but a very short time given the age of the universe, or even our own planet. Self replicating Von Neumann probes could handle the issue of exploring such a large number of solar systems by increasing their numbers exponentially. They could leave behind machines that could continuously monitor and survey planets for millions of years. If aliens exist, then I would expect for them to have observed us like that. Unless they have no interest in the outside world at all, which seems unlikely.
- enkephalin 11y agoi think the main issue with people having trouble believing in visitations from extraterrestrial species (or at least their technology), is that they have absolutely no sense for the age of the universe. and the fact that so many people believe it to be utterly ridiculous that alien life forms could be exploring the galaxy, yet here we humans are, doing exactly that, is just completely mind-boggling to me.
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- sam_goody 11y agoI think the main issue that most people have with aliens is that we kinda expect that if they exist (which scientifically and religiously they should) and they have the technology to have found us and interact with us (possible) they would have subjugated us or annihilated us by now. The fact that they haven't suggests that either they don't exist or that they haven't found us.
- joering2 11y agoIs that really real?? [1] Who on Earth would have such aircrafts in 1962 other than aliens?? https://www.cia.gov/news-information/blog/2016/images/UFO2.jpg/image.jpg https://www.cia.gov/news-information/blog/2016/images/UFO2.j...
- outworlder 11y agoThe second picture looks very much like a reflection from a lamp.
- partiallypro 11y agoThey had to have timed this with the X-Files premier on purpose
- andrewclunn 11y agoJust in time for the x files reboot.
- berkeleynerd 11y agoIf you're interested in the CIA's involvement with the UFO phenomena check out this article on the Robertson Panel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Panel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robertson_Panel “(t)he "debunking" aim would result in reduction in public interest in "flying saucers" which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such as television, motion pictures, and popular articles. Basis of such education would be actual case histories which had been puzzling at first but later explained. As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the "secret" is known. Such a program should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public and consequently their susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda. The Panel noted that the general absence of Russian propaganda based on a subject with so many obvious possibilities for exploitation might indicate a possible Russian official policy….The Panel took cognizance of the existence of such groups as the "Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators" (Los Angeles) and the "Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (Wisconsin). It was believed that such organizations should be watched because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking if widespread sightings should occur. The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind.”
- kylek 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout
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- miesman 11y agoAt last the truth can be told.