posted on Jun, 17 2004 @ 07:27 AM
The 1970s
and 1980s: The UFO Issue Refuses To Die
The Condon
report did not satisfy many UFOlogists, who considered it a coverup
for CIA activities in UFO research. Additional sightings in the early
1970s fueled beliefs that the CIA was somehow involved in a vast conspiracy.
On 7 June 1975, William Spaulding, head of a small UFO group, Ground
Saucer Watch (GSW), wrote to CIA requesting a copy of the Robertson
panel report and all records relating to UFOs. (81) Spaulding
was convinced that the Agency was withholding major files on UFOs. Agency
officials provided Spaulding with a copy of the Robertson panel report
and of the Durant report. (82)
On 14 July
1975, Spaulding again wrote the Agency questioning the authenticity
of the reports he had received and alleging a CIA coverup of its UFO
activities. Gene Wilson, CIA's Information and Privacy Coordinator,
replied in an attempt to satisfy Spaulding, "At no time prior to the
formation of the Robertson Panel and subsequent to the issuance of the
panel's report has CIA engaged in the study of the UFO phenomena." The
Robertson panel report, according to Wilson, was "the summation of Agency
interest and involvement in UFOs." Wilson also inferred that there were
no additional documents in CIA's possession that related to UFOs. Wilson
was ill informed. (83)
In September
1977, Spaulding and GSW, unconvinced by Wilson's response, filed a Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Agency that specifically
requested all UFO documents in CIA's possession. Deluged by similar
FOIA requests for Agency information on UFOs, CIA officials agreed,
after much legal maneuvering, to conduct a "reasonable search" of CIA
files for UFO materials. (84)
Despite an Agency-wide unsympathetic attitude toward the suit,
Agency officials, led by Launie Ziebell from the Office of General Counsel,
conducted a thorough search for records pertaining to UFOs. Persistent,
demanding, and even threatening at times, Ziebell and his group scoured
the Agency. They even turned up an old UFO file under a secretary's
desk. The search finally produced 355 documents totaling approximately
900 pages. On 14 December 1978, the Agency released all but 57 documents
of about 100 pages to GSW. It withheld these 57 documents on national
security grounds and to protect sources and methods. (85)
Although
the released documents produced no smoking gun and revealed only a low-level
Agency interest in the UFO phenomena after the Robertson panel report
of 1953, the press treated the release in a sensational manner. The
New York Times, for example, claimed that the declassified documents
confirmed intensive government concern over UFOs and that the Agency
was secretly involved in the surveillance of UFOs. (86) GSW
then sued for the release of the withheld documents, claiming that the
Agency was still holding out key information. (87)
It was much like the John F. Kennedy assassination issue. No matter
how much material the Agency released and no matter how dull and prosaic
the information, people continued to believe in a Agency coverup and
conspiracy.
DCI Stansfield
Turner was so upset when he read The New York Times article that
he asked his senior officers, "Are we in UFOs?" After reviewing the
records, Don Wortman, Deputy Director for Administration, reported to
Turner that there was "no organized Agency effort to do research in
connection with UFO phenomena nor has there been an organized effort
to collect intelligence on UFOs since the 1950s." Wortman assured Turner
that the Agency records held only "sporadic instances of correspondence
dealing with the subject," including various kinds of reports of UFO
sightings. There was no Agency program to collect actively information
on UFOs, and the material released to GSW had few deletions. (88) Thus
assured, Turner had the General Counsel press for a summary judgment
against the new lawsuit by GSW. In May 1980, the courts dismissed the
lawsuit, finding that the Agency had conducted a thorough and adequate
search in good faith. (89)
During
the late 1970s and 1980s, the Agency continued its low-key interest
in UFOs and UFO sightings. While most scientists now dismissed flying
saucers reports as a quaint part of the 1950s and 1960s, some in the
Agency and in the Intelligence Community shifted their interest to studying
parapsychology and psychic phenomena associated with UFO sightings.
CIA officials also looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings
might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed
its counterintelligence aspects. Agency analysts from the Life Science
Division of OSI and OSWR officially devoted a small amount of their
time to issues relating to UFOs. These included counterintelligence
concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using US citizens and UFO
groups to obtain information on sensitive US weapons development programs
(such as the Stealth aircraft), the vulnerability of the US air-defense
network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence
of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings.
CIA also
maintained Intelligence Community coordination with other agencies regarding
their work in parapsychology, psychic phenomena, and "remote viewing"
experiments. In general, the Agency took a conservative scientific view
of these unconventional scientific issues. There was no formal or official
UFO project within the Agency in the 1980s, and Agency officials purposely
kept files on UFOs to a minimum to avoid creating records that might
mislead the public if released. (90)
The 1980s
also produced renewed charges that the Agency was still withholding
documents relating to the 1947 Roswell incident, in which a flying saucer
supposedly crashed in New Mexico, and the surfacing of documents which
purportedly revealed the existence of a top secret US research and development
intelligence operation responsible only to the President on UFOs in
the late 1940s and early 1950s. UFOlogists had long argued that, following
a flying saucer crash in New Mexico in 1947, the government not only
recovered debris from the crashed saucer but also four or five alien
bodies. According to some UFOlogists, the government clamped tight security
around the project and has refused to divulge its investigation results
and research ever since. (91)
In September 1994, the US Air Force released a new report on
the Roswell incident that concluded that the debris found in New Mexico
in 1947 probably came from a once top secret balloon operation, Project
MOGUL, designed to monitor the atmosphere for evidence of Soviet nuclear
tests. (92)
Circa 1984,
a series of documents surfaced which some UFOlogists said proved that
President Truman created a top secret committee in 1947, Majestic-12,
to secure the recovery of UFO wreckage from Roswell and any other UFO
crash sight for scientific study and to examine any alien bodies recovered
from such sites. Most if not all of these documents have proved to be
fabrications. Yet the controversy persists. (93)
Like the
JFK assassination conspiracy theories, the UFO issue probably will not
go away soon, no matter what the Agency does or says. The belief that
we are not alone in the universe is too emotionally appealing and the
distrust of our government is too pervasive to make the issue amenable
to traditional scientific studies of rational explanation and evidence.