, Thousands of pages of shared documents are accessible to everyone. This graph from Project Blue Book shows the frequency of reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) during the months of June through September 1952.
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Approximately 2,780 pages of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) documents detailing the government’s findings on unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are now available for everyone to read and download.
As Brandon Specktor reports for Live Science, the Black Vault collection contains UFO documents declassified by the CIA since the 1980s. Site owner John Greenewald Jr., obtained the newly digitized documents — which the CIA said represented its entire UFO collection — by filing a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
“The Black Vault fought for them for years and many were freed in the late 1990s.” – writes Greenewald in a blog post. “Over time, however, the CIA developed a collection of UFO materials on CD-ROM, including both the original recordings and those that have been the subject of controversy for years.”
Greenewald purchased the CD-ROM in mid-2020 and the spent the last few months converting the content into searchable PDF files. According to Live Science, its greatest treasures include a 1976 story in which a former government deputy director for science and technology receives mysterious information about UFOs, and a documentary about a strange nighttime explosion in a small Russian town.
“About 20 years ago, I fought for years to get the CIA to release more UFO records,” Greenewald told Vice’s Samir Ferdowsi. “It was like pulling teeth!” I went back and forth with them trying to get it done and finally I did it. I received a large box with several thousand pages and had to scan it page by page.
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. In other recent UFO news, the CIA itself has separately uploaded dozens of downloadable records of UFO sightings and unexplained events from around the world to its electronic FOIA reader. According to Nexstar Media Wire, the files range from the ’40s to the early ’90s.
The release of the agency’s data comes a month after Congress passed a 5,600-page COVID-19 relief bill that included a provision requiring the release of UFO-related documents. Materials. As Steven Greenstreet and Steven Nelson report for the New York Post, within 180 days of the bill’s ratification, Defense Department and intelligence officials must “submit a report … on unidentified aerial phenomena to the congressional, intelligence and military committees.” “Services” (the so-called preferred government term for UFOs).
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UFOs have long had a permanent place in popular lore.According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the phenomenon became a major topic of public interest after World War II, when rocket technology was first developed. Businessman Kenneth Arnold made the first widely known UFO sighting in 1947 when he claimed to see nine objects flying through the air “like flying saucers skipping over water.”
As similar reports of unexplained flying objects became more common, the US government initiated numerous projects to record UFO sightings.According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, more than 12,000 animals were spotted between 1952 and 1969 in the most famous example, Project Blue Book. More recently, public interest in UFOs has increased thanks to the Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program (AATIP), a secret government organization that operated from 2007 to 2012.
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UFO enthusiasts like Greenewald have long sought to increase the availability of information about UFOs. these mysterious objects.
Last May, in a conversation with Shaun Raviv of the Columbia Journalism Review, Greenewald said, “I like to give people raw, unedited information so they can make up their own minds.” »