Saturday, January 9, 2010

My overview of the NSA FOIA documents

Hi all

Well, what to make of the documents relating to UFOs which are publicly available on the National Security Agency's website?

There are some documents which probably relate to propaganda balloons launched over China; probable sightings of Russian aircraft over northern Canada; the fascinating 1976 Iran aircraft encounter; miscellaneous old sightings; and the world wide program Project Moondust which was vacuuming up bits of fallen satellites.

When you spend the time to look through these documents and think about the implications, as I have in recent weeks, you get a sense that there is some good material here which should have helped to further understand the UFO phenomenon.

From earlier posts I note the following:

1. Richard M Dolan in his work "UFOs and the National Security State: chronology of a coverup 1941-1973" page 118 stated that "The NSA immediately became involved in UFO reports" but fails to document the source of this assertion. For more information on Dolan's work click here.

2. In 1972, Jacques Vallee (Forbidden Science Volume 2 p 159) mentioned talking to one Howell McConnell of NSA who told Vallee "So we keep an eye on things." For information on Vallee, see his personal website here. McConnell gets a mention in Timothy Good's 2007 book "Need to know" click here. After retiring from the NSA McConnell spoke at conferences, for example here. Finally click here for a 2008 mention of McConnell.

3. In 1975, Jacques Vallee wrote of meeting an NSA physicist (Forbidden Science volume 2 p 312)who told him that he (the physicist) conducted a search of the NSA for intercept messages relating to UFOs and failed to find any. For one review of Forbidden Science Volume 2 click here.

4. In 1976, Vallee (Forbidden Science volume 2 p327) spoke of meeting someone who claimed that they had been apart of a special NSA group dedicated to researching UFOs.

I guess, in the end, it boils down to a) either these are all the NSA documents on UFOs and there had been no officially sanctioned research project on UFOs; or b) there was such research by NSA and these research documents have not been released.

Over to you readers, for your comments.

1 comment:

  1. Dear Pauline, this is the "professor" from the big study returning your favor of a blog comment since you suggested that I look at your blog. I have not had time to read much yet, but it seems a rational site. Since you are Ozzie, you should try to get in contact with Bill Chalker if you haven't already. He is Australia's finest, especially now that Keith Basterfield is "retired". On the subject of this NSA posting. I also have an interest in such matters, but what I've found so far isn't encouraging that they had some formal study project. I have a very good friend who was NSA during the days of all the hullaballoo, and he has told me that the famous intriguing documents came out of essentially "lunch-room" discussions among a few of them who were very interested in UFOs in the 1960s. Tom [Deuley} is both a founder of the Fund for UFO Research and an officer in MUFON and certainly a straight shooter. NSA surely came across things of interest to UFOlogists during all the ELINT Intel they accumulated, but UFOs would have been an impractical distraction to their business. Thank goodness that they didn't have to worry about such matters. A better candidate for a load of still secret UFO materials would be the Navy, which has always been completely uncooperative FOIA-wise, and the USAF itself, which clearly derailed national security cases away from Blue Book and stopped them at Air Defense Command HQ. I can't promise that I'll get back very quickly if you have a "back-question or comment". Maybe you can "wake me up" on my blog if you do.

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