CIA Official Tweet Takes Credit for 50's and 60's UFO Sightings

a reply to: karl 12

Happy New Year Karl.

Yes my point was that the CIA are putting out information, which of course, isn't really much information at all. They are hoping people will look at the headline or the tweet and ignore the rest of it. All they really were saying is that a number of Bluebook cases (mainly from pilots) were linked to the U2 (and only for about a decade). So not many at all amongst the huge numbers of reports.

Nothing anyone else hasn't really said to be honest. And of course many of us are aware of the various toxic streams injected by the intel boys into the UFO lore in the years that followed.

a reply to: stirling

Ya it sure does in the 1950s and 1960s think
about it after te second world war and project
paper clip /ufos /ya /made up /
The cia was paying for the hollywood movies
That were made about ets.
The people that were looking for the ufos
The groups that were so called ufo hunters
were all lead by cia men no one new this .
at the time /thats way the most reports were
from the cia because they were incharge of all the spin

I love how ATS can just divine the unspoken intentions of an entire section of the government. everybody here always knows what's going on everywhere.

Given its reputation and history, it's not an illogical assumption that anything the CIA says is a lie, and anything it does is a conspiracy. It's an organization built upon on a foundation of lies, and is immediately disbelieved even when it does occasionally release something true (like the boy who cried "wolf"). Personally, I think this is one of those times.

It only makes sense. We know that these spy flights took place, but it was top secret at the time. People certainly would have seen these aircraft, and many folks saw "UFOs" corresponding to the time/place of these flights. If those were space men and not these airplanes, then where are all the accounts of mysterious airplane sightings?

Had folks interpreted what they saw as mysterious military aircraft, during the Cold War era there would have been talk (if not a frenzy) about spy plane sightings. But everybody was "seeing" and talking about flying saucers and little green men instead. THAT was the lie and the cover-up being encouraged by intelligence services!

originally posted by: karl 12

originally posted by: mirageman

My interpretation of that is that just over a half of the UFO reports from pilots and ground base observers that were filed in writing with Air Force Investigators (Blue Book) were supposedly matched with U2 & OXCART flights through the late 1950s into the majority of the 1960s.

Hola MM (and a happy new year!) - haven´t had much time to post recently but do find it interesting that the CIA are parading out this old chestnut again -here´s a relevant post in reply to MBKennel about the veracity of the claims.

Originally posted by mbkennel

That actually makes sense because many of the UFO reports were of CORONA, U-2 and A-12 and other aerial reconaissance projects run by CIA.

I'm assuming your basing your opinion on the claim made by Gerald K. Haines in 1997 - have you ever checked its veracity?

1997--The CIA and Spy Planes

In a report published at about the same time as the Air Force's "crash dummy" revelation, the Central Intelligence Agency tried to write off thousands of UFO reports as mistaken observations of secret spy planes. It ended up writing fiction.

The first demonstrably incorrect statement was that there had been a major increase in UFO reports immediately following the first test flight of the prototype U-2 spy plane in August 1955. A simple count of cases in the files of Project Blue Book (which the CIA admits it used) shows that there had actually been a major decrease.

Then the CIA claimed that half of almost 9,000 UFO sightings made between mid-1955 and late1969 had been mistaken observations of U-2 and later SR-71 spy planes. Since those airplanes cruise too high to be seen from the ground (at more than 70,000 feet), this could not be the case. Moreover, one of the hallmarks of UFO descriptions in that period was their spectacular maneuvers, including right-angle turns at high speed. Both the U-2 and the SR-71 are among the least maneuverable airplanes used by the U.S. military.

Thirdly, the CIA claimed it had conspired with the staff of the Air Force's Project Blue Book to conceal the alleged sightings of spy planes by having them falsely labeled as obscure types of atmospheric phenomena. Had this been the case, several thousand UFO reports for 1955 - 1969 in the permanent files of Project Blue Book would be blamed on ice crystals, temperature inversions, and so on. But the actual total is barely three dozen.

Why the CIA would invent such an easily disproved story is unknown

link

The phrase 'demonstrably incorrect' is used in the article from the Coalition for Freedom of Information website so I guess all it's a matter of doing is checking if there actually was an increase or decrease in reports after August 1955; if hallmarks of UFO reports from that era actually did involve highly unusual flight characteristics; if the CIA actually did conspire with Project Blue Book to mislabel alleged U2 sightings as 'obscure types of atmospheric phenomena' and if the total number of these alleged Bluebook reports is only actually three dozen.

Below is another relevant article which also bring up the points that the spy plane flights were too few in number to account for all the alleged UFO reports; that the flights were carried out in areas far from public view and that the U-2 and A-12 flew at very high altitudes and were difficult to detect with the naked eye - there's also an interesting snippet concerning the then Project Bluebook Chief Robert Friend:

In 1997, Haines claimed that the CIA used UFO reports as cover for spy planes such as the U-2, and that the Air Force knowingly went along with this deception. Always ready to accept CIA material, the `New York Times' ingested the story - hook, line, and sinker. And thus another bogus claim became historical fact.

There are many problems with the claim. First, the CIA is never a credible source about its own history. After all, it is in business to deceive. Second, spy plane flights were too few in number to account for many UFO reports and they were carried out in areas far from public view. Third, the black U-2 and A-12 "Oxcart" flew at very high altitudes and were difficult to detect both visually and (in the case of the A-12) on radar. Fourth, UFO reports of the era bear little if any resemblance to the flight characteristics of high-altitude spy planes.

But most fatally, Lt. Col. (Ret.) Robert Friend, head of the Air Force's Project Blue Book from 1958 to 1963, later said there is absolutely no truth to the CIA's claims. Not only was Haines wrong about an agreement between the CIA and Air Force but Friend said he never received a single UFO report that he thought could be attributed to a spy plane.

link

originally posted by: skyblueworld

Never been interested in the 95%, it's always been about the unknowns anyway...

Hi mate and think you make a very important point there - it´s also been shown that the ´official´ unknown report percentages were quite a bit bigger than that.


Official UFO Unexplained Report Percentages.


Cheers.

Jeez, these are great posts, thank you guys for your work. Fascinating how flimsy and transparent the lies are getting when it comes to the cover-up of the alien situation. It's almost like they gave up trying, and who knows, maybe they have.

a reply to: karl 12

Happy New Year karl 12! I am beyond happy to see you liven this discussion up my man. You have been missed.

Im always suspicious when someone takes credit for something; when, if they actually were benefiting from the situation, it would make more sense to be quiet.

......

And of course many of us are aware of the various toxic streams injected by the intel boys into the UFO lore in the years that followed.

there would seem to be at least two strands though - a damping down of interest amongst the general public, and the manipulation of the ideas of the 'believers', combined with an undermining of the ufo community in general

for whatever reason, they've expended a lot of time and energy on it over a significant period

They took credit for a chunk of them, but that means that there is a segment that they can't explain and don't take credit for.

I have no doubt that there are visitors to this planet. Considering the size of the universe (multi-verse), I"m sure we are not alone. The visitors are probably studying us and shaking their collective heads in disbelief at how utterly moronic humanity is. All the wasted time and money fighting over religion and politics, when all that money and effort could have been instead spent on space exploration and finding a new planet to colonize. (we've over populated and destroyed Earth). Major dumb move on our part. It's like a large chunk of humanity never made it out of the bronze age or something.

link

an interesting article and response from 1998

yesterday's heresy becomes tomorrow's orthodoxy?

originally posted by: aynock
link

an interesting article and response from 1998

yesterday's heresy becomes tomorrow's orthodoxy?

You should quote that. Tim Matthews was 100% "dead on" in his assessment of UFOlogy in 1998 and it has not changed, it's just gotten worse.

Came across this old BBC story on the CIA, Cheney ordered CIA to hide plan

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has claimed that the CIA misled her about interrogation methods including water-boarding, while other senior Democrats have quoted Mr Panetta as admitting that his agency regularly misled Congress before he took office.

Former Vice President Cheney forced the CIA to cover up a secret program after 9/11 and the above statement shows the CIA likes to mislead. So the CIA easily could do this with UFO sightings.

a reply to: JadeStar

7 - Failure to counter the sensationalist UFO nonsense that mainly emanates from the USA but which is becoming increasingly popular here except by the miserable skeptics - whose material is often just as ridiculous as the believers and which often trots out government propaganda. (tim mathews from a list of 'major problems within [uk] ufology')

The USA gets the bad rap again. Actually, we are at the leading edge of UFO research and that is why many of the UFO magazines in the UK turn to stories about American researchers. (response from bill hamilton)

at the time tim mathews was promoting the idea that ufos were nazi craft, developed by the us government

a bit of tim mathews background info/disinfo?:


link

Many of you (not all) will have already heard
about Tim Hepple (now calling himself Tim
Matthews), currently posturing as a 'UFO
investigator'. I and others, including Steve
Booth, have been researching the antics of this
Nazi thug, and have recently finished the
publication 'At War With the Universe: Exactly
How & Why Nazi Thug & State Asset Tim
Hepple/Matthews has infiltrated Ufology'.

here's an interesting talk given by tim mathews in 2008

the image quality isn't great, but the audio is ok - a lot of interesting points

a reply to: Jainine

It's like a large chunk of humanity never made it out of the bronze age or something.

imo a large chunk of a human being's psyche is much more primitive than that - hence the fun and games

Let's be honest, government entities love to take credit for anything they can. I'm actually a little surprised that they would be all over this kind of thing though. Over the years, it seems as though certain bodies of legislation and government try to create several degrees of separation between themselves and the UFO phenomena.
In my own life, 25 years and counting, I've seen countless things in the sky that I couldn't really explain. Only a handful, however, were absolutely astounding. One in particular I will be creating a thread about today at some point after I finish up here at work. I live near Joint Base MDL on the east coast of the United States, so there are always things flying over my house. In the past few months though, there have been a lot, and I mean a LOT, of the classic black unmarked helicopters whizzing around, doing who knows what. I'll have to also create a thread about the UFO helicopter chase incident that occurred in my area over this past summer, which includes 4 other witness aside from myself.

Positive vibes my friends, enjoy the day, live life to the fullest and always seek the truth, no matter who or what stands before you.

originally posted by: charlyv
This is exactly the kind of information you would expect to see come out, right before the real deal makes a cameo appearance.

Call it anything you want... Getting your Ducks in a Row, plausible deniability, convenience alibi's, custom fabricated stories that can be fitted to many situations, and I am sure some technical jealousy...

Something is going down, and they must think we are all still stupid.

Given all the local MSM reports these days, the Vatican and the Pope making statements, NASA having conferences on ET life, the preponderance of Youtube videos - many of which remained unexplained - you're right, it does feel like disclosure or some similar event is at hand or nearing closer.

My advice to those who have knowingly been part of the cover-up (not those like I used to be, and can't break out of the years of social conditioning), you will zero credibility at best when this happens, other less conscious individuals may call for criminal repercussions or other forms of revenge (not myself, well maybe criminal prosecution).

I am not really interested in UFO's, and I would not say I believe them to be extraterrestrial spacecraft either, but I am interested in how human eyewitnesses perceive various events, and I find it ridiculous that the SR-71 or the U-2 could account for even a good portion of the sightings that occurred in the 50's and 60's. You have encounters with numerous witnesses seeing behavior that neither craft was capable of. And both of these craft were designed to fly at high altitudes, which they did. Yet a number of UFO reports detail craft that were much closer to the ground, that made no noise, etc. So again, I have no agenda or anything, rather I just find it unbelievable. And what the CIA is admitting is that they "think" they were responsible for these reports. Yet even they only take credit for about half of them. And we know they had no other classified aircraft up there. The SR-71 looks strange, even today, but the U-2 looked like an ordinary aircraft for the most part. It had some long, thin wings, but the fuselage or nose was not unfamiliar to anybody at that time. I do not know if the CIA is trying to detract from the UFO phenomenon, and I cannot discount that possibility, but a lot of it will come down to how they made their determinations. For instance, how close did one of these flights have to be to a UFO sighting for them to conclude that the conventional aircraft was responsible?