CIA UFO Tweet Revisited.

Don't know if anyone remembers this rather bizarre CIA tweet from a few years back regarding the majority of UFO sightings from the 1950's and 1960's being 'spy planes'.

Company man Gerald Haines also pops up in the vid below stating a similar thing with UFO historian Richard Dolan countering the claim as 'absurd'.

See 35:40

Suppose people are going to believe what they are going to believe but there's some info below which appears to show the CIA claim (and Tweet) is complete nonsense.

• Also pretty amazing just how many links have now been deleted regarding this subject but some sections from articles have been saved.




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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 above so I guess all it's a matter of doing is checking if there actually was an increase in reports after August 1955 (there wasn't); if hallmarks of UFO reports from that era actually did involve highly unusual flight characteristics(they did); if the CIA actually did conspire with Project Blue Book to mislabel alleged U2 sightings as 'obscure types of atmospheric phenomena' (they didn't) and if the total number of these alleged Bluebook reports is only actually three dozen (it wasn't).

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:




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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

Although some of his associates were actively promoting the CIA claims looks like Robert Sheaffer (member of the notorious UFO debunking cult CSICOP) saw through the BS so I guess you have to give him credit for that.




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Space.com

The CIA tweet has sparked its own UFO flap: Several analysts dispute the CIA assertion that U-2 flights really caused upward of half of UFO sightings.

"One thing this CIA UFO claim has accomplished: It has united UFO skeptics and proponents in proclaiming it untrue," Robert Sheaffer, author and well-known UFO cynic, wrote in a blog post last week. "We might agree on little else, except that this claim is nonsense."

Sheaffer explains that the Project Blue Book files are now public records, allowing anyone to verify when and where sightings were reported.

"The bottom line is: There is absolutely no correlation between the times and places of UFO reports and U-2 flights," he wrote.

A similar view about the CIA assertion is held by UFO photo analyst Bruce Maccabee, who analyzed the data and concluded that the CIA's explanation is "preposterous."

The statistics "do not bear out the claim that there was a large increase in sightings by any segment of the population, pilots and air traffic controllers included, once the U-2 aircraft started flying," Maccabee wrote in a recent blog post.

Sheaffer also argues that the CIA's claim that the U-2 flights led to the creation of Project Blue Book does not hold water, "because Blue Book predates the U-2 flights by several years. Other Air Force projects to investigate 'flying saucer' sightings were created several years earlier still."

link

Also some relevant comments from the Anomalist and Billy Cox.


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Earlier this week, the CIA announced "Sixties UFOs? J/K, it was us. LOL!" Adding insult to injury, Steve Inskeep at NPR Joins The Comics, unironically taking the CIA's report at face value, something which pseudoskeptics accuse woo-peddlers of doing, rather than engaging in hard hitting journalism..

link

And optical physicist Bruce Maccabee (who labelled the claims 'preposterous').


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In 1997 the CIA published an article that describes its involvement in the history of UFO phenomena. (The article is published in the unclassified version of "Studies in Intelligence," a twice-yearly CIA journal. It is available at the CIA website.) According to historian and author Jerry Haines, the CIA believed that when the U-2 high altitude spy plane began flying in early August, 1955, "commercial pilots and air traffic controllers began reporting a large increase in UFO sightings." 

Link

Would be interested in any related opinions but considering how much of the original material has now disappeared just wanted to put all the saved article sections on one thread.

Great posts!

The CIA's record on UFOs and practically everything else is despicable indeed.

They're very quiet in this modern UFO explosion, and one wonders what dirty tricks they're up to now, maybe behind the whole present scheme.

It always made me suspicious of all those ex-CIA agents from Hillenkoetter to Green hanging around UFO organizations like pests. Indulging in skullduggery, which was probably illegal.

Likely doing a favor for the CIA mob after retirement, checking on the UFO groups just as the Robertson panel suggested they do. Or was ordered to suggest they do?

Another interesting thing is Colm A. Kelleher in Valley’s FS5 claimed( without any proof) that Doty was always a CIA agent in some form.

Mm suggested that would be impossible looking at his history, but the CIA has all kinds of ways to do that and their sordid history; on, for instance, the JFK murder characters like Lee Harvey Oswald and Clay Shaw, the CIA had hooks into them...and others we'll never know about.

Doty's history is very sketchy, particularly on his war record. So anything is possible as far as the duplicitous ways of the CIA.

One thing is for sure. They've done so much dirt within ufology and other related areas that they'll never willingly submit to any " disclosure."

I just seen this bet it will be same old same old

Pentagon to release declassified UFO photos, videos and reports on new website

Source

a reply to: karl 12

Karl, thanks for posting this, have made the same point several times in various threads but nice to have some actual material to justify the position.

originally posted by: introufo

The CIA's record on UFOs and practically everything else is despicable indeed.

Think it's fair to say they haven't got the best track record mate.

Contrary to what they want the public to believe seems they were rather concerned (and mystified) as to what was flying about in the early 1950's - especially if one reads the internal documentation from their Assistant Director Of Scientific Intelligence H. Marshall Chadwell.

originally posted by: chunder

Karl, thanks for posting this, have made the same point several times in various threads but nice to have some actual material to justify the position.

Yes nice one mate and seem like this myth is alive and well on some pseudosceptic forums so thought it was worth compiling some of the relevant articles - didn't realize the majority would be deleted lol.

Frank Warren hasn't been on ATS for a while but his UFO Chronicles website is a bloody great source for saved articles - here's a relevant one from Robert Hastings.

The spin doctors at the CIA recently trotted out, once again, the long-ago discredited claim that secret flights of its U-2 reconnaissance aircraft led to a massive increase in UFO reports in the U.S.—something the agency says it welcomed, because the misidentifications masked the true nature of the aerial craft being observed, thereby helping to maintain the covert program’s cover.

A CIA-originated tweet on December 29, 2014, read, “Reports of unusual activity in the skies in the ‘50s? It was us.” The sender then claimed that “half” of UFO reports in the 1950s and ‘60s were due to sightings of the U-2.

Of course, no explanation was offered as to how a secret fixed-wing aircraft, appearing as a mere speck in the sky as it flew at 60,000 feet above the earth, could possibly account for the tens of thousands of UFO reports during that two-decade period involving sightings of saucers, globes, triangles and cylinders that maneuvered and hovered near the ground, stopped car engines, scared livestock and left landing gear marks in the dirt.

No matter. The elite media and small town news organizations alike uncritically picked-up and circulated the agency’s latest UFO-related slight-of-hand, apparently unaware that the CIA’s “admission” has no factual basis and was completely debunked years ago by UFO researchers utilizing credible sighting databases and statistical analysis..

CIA Falsely Claims U-2 Spy Plane Flights Greatly Increased UFO Reports: The Agency’s Actual UFO Secrets are Far More Interesting