back to article UFOs in the '50s skies? CIA admits: 'IT WAS US'

The US government's Central Intelligence Agency has 'fessed up about reports of UFO sightings in the 1950s by playfully tweeting "it was us". It linked to a document entitled The CIA and the U-2 Program 1954-1974 (PDF), which was first published in 1998. The CIA decided to flag it up via its Twitter account because it had …

  1. Bassey

    Who else?

    "And, anyway, if the CIA can only account for around half of all UFO sightings, then what the hell else was up there peering down on citizens of Planet Earth?"

    The Russian planes spying on the US.

    1. Tom 7

      Re: Who else?

      Most UFO sightings are piss easy to explain to those that will listen. The only ones I have trouble with are the ones over fault lines - I know what causes them but not how. I'm guessing its a similar mechanism that generates sprites over thunderstorms.

      1. DarkShroom

        Re: Who else?

        i also keep trying to explain the Zetas are friendly, it just takes the focus away from the greater threat of the reptilians

        1. Mark 85

          Re: Who else?

          For some reason I read that as: explain the Zitas are friendly and was thinking that the sightings all had something to do with FSM. Might still be his noodly goodness.

      2. DropBear
        Alien

        Re: Who else?

        "Most UFO sightings are piss easy to explain to those that will listen."

        Why of course they are. Any sane person knows it was either Venus, swamp gases, or a meteo balloon...

        1. Captain DaFt

          Re: Who else?

          "Any sane person knows it was either Venus, swamp gases, or a meteo balloon..."

          When in doubt, consult this chart:

          https://eideard.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/us-aircraft-identification-chart-2.jpg?w=680

          1. Chemist

            Re: Who else?

            THHGG states that it is "Space Aliens" , especially near Heathrow, so who are we to argue

    2. imanidiot Silver badge

      Re: Who else?

      Russians and as of yet still classified test aircraft.

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Who else?

        "yet still classified test aircraft."

        Indeed.

        Once a few photos of the F117 made it into the mainstream reports of triangular UFOs stopped overnight.

        Once the existence of stealthed-up choppers got into mainstream, a lot of the slow moving stuff got explained too (I'd heard of stealth blackhawks about a decade before one bellyflopped into /bin/laden's compound, but cursory checking revealed people who mentioned them were generally classed as tinfoilers)

        The CIA and several other organisations spent a long time planting people in various tinfoil hat brigades to keep them paranoid and believing in UFOs/alien visitors, as this was an easy way to keep the classified aircraft programs under wraps. In all liklihood they still do.

        (FWIW, the standard alien "experiences" tend to follow movies of similar themes - showing that most people involved are fairly suggestible. They may _believe_ they were abducted by aliens, but it's more likely to have been a particularly vivid dream, possibly years after seeing Close Encounters, etc)

        1. Ben Tasker
          Joke

          Re: Who else?

          FWIW, the standard alien "experiences" tend to follow movies of similar themes - showing that most people involved are fairly suggestible. They may _believe_ they were abducted by aliens, but it's more likely to have been a particularly vivid dream, possibly years after seeing Close Encounters, etc

          To pile conspiracy on top of conspiracy, as you said

          The CIA and several other organisations spent a long time planting people in various tinfoil hat brigades to keep them paranoid

          Let's accept that's true - the ultimate way for the CIA to keep the paranoia (and outward appearance of such) would be to do a few 'alien' abductions themselves. Slip the targets a few drugs and then wear rubberised suits whilst brandishing a certain medical instrument related to the bottom, lots of light's etc.

          Mind you, if it came out, I guess an anal-probe could be seen as state sanctioned anal rape....

          1. Bob Dole (tm)

            Re: Who else?

            >>Mind you, if it came out, I guess an anal-probe could be seen as state sanctioned anal rape....

            EIT - Enhanced Interrogation Techniques. They had to test them somehow before writing the manuals.

          2. Suricou Raven

            Re: Who else?

            It's more interesting that the aliens appearance always seems to reflect the pop-culture aliens of the time.

        2. BrownishMonstr

          Re: Who else?

          They may _believe_ they were abducted by aliens, but it's more likely to have been a particularly vivid dream

          Agree about the vividly dream. Had I not woken up from my extremely vivid dream I seriously would have thought the government has some mind control programme. The dream sure felt real.

    3. Bloakey1

      Re: Who else?

      The predecessors of Al Qaeda on the look out for kaffirs and infidels. They had very large planes called Bin Liners.

    4. chivo243 Silver badge
      Black Helicopters

      Re: Who else?

      Let's see what TV history has to offer:

      Jim Kirk's Enterprise

      Planet Express Delivery Ship

      Getting back to reality, wasn't there some guy Von Braun working on rockets and such then too? As much as the US tried to keep things top secret, I would believe that the CIA didn't know everything, and that would account for the other half.

      1. ceayers

        Re: Who else?

        Don't forget the DHL chevrons...

      2. ceayers

        Re: Who else?

        and the Tracy Brothers..

    5. skeptical i
      Devil

      Re: Who else?

      Secret Squirrel and Morocco Mole!

  2. BongoJoe

    The Welsh

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      there definitely some sateLLite & llaunch vehicle jokes to be made there, but i'm too sheepish.

    2. mahasamatman
      Pint

      Re: The Welsh

      blwyddyn newydd dda

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: The Welsh

        And a Happy New Year to you too!

    3. baalel
      Coat

      If it was The Welsh, the secret would have leek'ed long ago

      1. Crazy Operations Guy

        They could have held an international news conference about it, but no one would know, because no one can understand them.

        1. BongoJoe

          You may laugh, but the International Dyslexia Conference was held up here in North Wales back in the 80s or 90s.

          I often wondered how the delegates read the maps.

          1. Amorous Cowherder
            Happy

            "I often wondered how the delegates read the maps."

            You wicked person!

      2. P. Lee
        Coat

        > If it was The Welsh, the secret would have leek'ed long ago

        Yeah, someone would have blaaabed

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    what the hell else was up there peering down on citizens of Planet Earth?

    Soviet spy craft, you silly.

    1. thomas k.

      Re: "It was us."

      They also said they weren't spying on us willy-nilly and they didn't torture anyone.

  4. DaveB

    Yes but

    Talking to a retired U2 pilot some years ago he confirmed that they were often reported as UFOs. He also said that the pilots also saw the odd UFO but they didn't report such events.

    1. Vic

      Re: Yes but

      He also said that the pilots also saw the odd UFO

      Yeah, Meth's a hell of a drug...

      Vic.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Misdirection.

    So what exactly is the CIA trying to hide by publicizing this attention-misdirecting fabrication, eh?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Misdirection.

      The reason the CIA doesn't care about torturing human beings is that they are, in fact, our alien overlords.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Misdirection.

        Why do UFO's only ever kidnap and anal probe in-bred mid western peanut farmers and hillbillies?

        Do you ever hear of a scientist or academic being abducted? (politicians fall in the previous sentence's category)

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Misdirection.

          The UFOs are trying to understand why the peanut farmers and hillbillies are allowed to breed, because on their planet they have been automated out of existence. As have politicians...Harold Wilson once suggested that decision making would be improved by a set of traffic lights connected to a random number generator, the idea being that the decision would be quick and so if it was obviously wrong it could be reversed. Given the record of recent governments, replacing the Front Bench with a set of traffic lights and letting Change.org vote on what the decisions to be made should be, would lead to a faster, cheaper and more democratic system.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Misdirection.

          "Do you ever hear of a scientist or academic being abducted?"

          Someone hasn't heard of Stanton Friedman then. Harvard Physicist and Alien Abduction expert.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanton_T._Friedman

          If you're interested, look up something called "The Disclosure Project", in which a whole series of credible witnesses retell incredible stories. Believe them or not, its no parade of " in-bred mid western peanut farmers and hillbillies"

          Admiral Lord Hill-Norton: Five-Star Admiral, Former Head of the British Ministry of Defense, July 2000

          Sgt. Clifford Stone: US Army

          Sgt. Karl Wolfe: US Air Force

          Merle Shane McDow: US Navy Atlantic Command

          Nick Pope: British Ministry of Defense Official

          Astronaut Edgar Mitchell

          John Callahan: FAA Head of Accidents and Investigations

          Professor Robert Jacobs: Lt. US Air Force

          Major-General Vasily Alexeyev: Russian Air Force

          Dr. Alfred Webre: Senior Policy Analyst Stanford Research Institute

          ....there is quite an extensive list of "believers".

          [Caveat: I neither believe nor disbelieve personally, but find it an interesting and misunderstood phenomena]

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Misdirection.

      It couldn't be the executive summary of a torture report that has been giving them so much grief lately. The report they hacked the Senate over. No, the CIA is secretive but fun. They are your friends and guardians.

    3. lambda_beta
      Linux

      Re: Misdirection.

      Hiding the other 50%

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    nothing changes

    All these sightings over the US were the CIA... perhaps they forget what country they were supposed to be spying on, or more likely it was all a very innocent mistake. I believe that's the standard response when you get caught cock in hand with your pants down surveilling your entire population in violation of the constitution.

    1. Vic

      Re: nothing changes

      All these sightings over the US were the CIA... perhaps they forget what country they were supposed to be spying on

      They have to land somewhere - and I'm pretty sure you can't put a U2 down on a carrier.

      Vic.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Alien

    Eh, I don't believe the CIA...

    Alien infiltration is the only sensible explanation for much of what goes on in our media and celebrity circles!

  8. WalterAlter
    Joke

    Your eyelids are growing heavy...

    Before I can begin my lecture on UFO's and mass hysteria, you'll need to YouTube "Pentacostal" "Benny Hinn" and "fleecing the flock".

  9. phil dude
    Pint

    thought experiment...

    Consider that any technology sufficiently advanced would appear like magic....perhaps from a less cynical age that we live in.

    A logical stance might be that any technology that was sufficiently advanced might not be *perceptible*.

    Consider the caveman finding a digital watch... (HHGTTG!!).

    How about some modern technology that has no identifying marks but you need to "know" it sells something.... (thinking of the 2000 a Space Odyssey). Maybe the Obelisk was a particularly sleek Coke machine.... ;-)

    In otherwords, aliens visiting the Earth will require such advanced technology, we might not recognise them...

    The beer helps...Happy 2015 - we made it.

    P.

  10. asdf

    of course it was U2s

    Probably a lot less of the reports were for the never shot down SR-71 because it just plain made itself less of a target. Its too bad they were nearly as expensive to fly as the space shuttle (hyperbole but barely) so now the U2 lives on (insert Bono joke here).

    1. Florida1920

      Re: of course it was U2s

      Probably a lot less of the reports were for the never shot down SR-71

      Now that I'm well past the age of caring.... a radar operator at a USAF radar station outside Charleston, SC, detected something flying high and fast in 1967. The Pentagon sent down a major to investigate the "UFO" (the "Purpose of Visit" entry in the orderly room sign-in book said "UFO investigation"). The major advised the operator he hadn't seen anything. I wonder if even that major was cleared to know about the SR-71, which probably is what was detected. The radar operator was a well-grounded, believably serious young man, so until I heard about the Blackbird I often wondered what it was he'd seen.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: of course it was U2s

        SR-71 pilots did admit to having seen Concord(e), so it is entirely possible that Concord(e) pilots had to be told about it, so they did not file reports.

      2. Vic

        Re: of course it was U2s

        a radar operator at a USAF radar station outside Charleston, SC, detected something flying high and fast in 1967

        A mate of mine used to be ATC at Buchan. One morning, he was sent the flight plan of an SR71 that was coming through.

        There was hell to pay...

        Vic.

    2. P. Lee
      Coat

      Re: of course it was U2s

      >so now the U2 lives on

      Shurley it was Sting. Though I could never tell whether he was a legal or an illegal.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You should be frightened...

    ...very frightened that the CIA can only acknowledge operating half of the UFOs.

    1. BristolBachelor Gold badge
      Joke

      Re: You should be frightened...

      Yeah, but it was the left-hand that made the aknowledgement; and that has no idea what the right-hand does

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: You should be frightened...

        Denial is futile.

  12. Chris G

    It woz the CIA wot done it!

    Are they also claiming responsibility for the thousands of 'Close Encounter' victims and Abductees who have suffered(?) anal probing ?

    And what were they looking for?

    We should be told!

    1. willi0000000

      Re: It woz the CIA wot done it!

      those weren't 'probes' . . . that was just a CIA experimental 'feeding' program.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: It woz the CIA wot done it!

        "The CIA...being a royal pain in the arse to brown people everywhere". Little did people know how appropriate was their slogan.

  13. david 12 Silver badge

    conspiracy theories

    And my theory is that one reasons Americans are so prone to accepting conspiracy theories is that conspiracy was standard government procedure, and everybody knew it.

    From the outside, these were all "UFOs", but remember that pilots / and airline passengers / were routinely being briefed and cautioned.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Vodka!!!!!

    I'll never forget the woman who said she saw strange lights that went from red, to amber, to green. It was one of those Channel 5 (I think) documentaries. Me and a mate were watching it, while on the beer (think Men Behaving Badly). Both of us simultaneously pissed ourselves laughing, while assuming she was on the Vodka.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I am outraged by you all

    Here's why. I've been reading the register for, what 20 years? I've spent as long being a business analyst and systems analyst in the City of London. These are two different things but actually, they both have commonalities - they're both about analysing loads of data and finding a new way through the cruft to create a new and more efficient system that makes more profit.

    However, although I've recently thought that a lot of commenters on this site are paid for by the pentagon or by the General Council of the Highly Questionable (I'll leave you to work out the acronym there), the rest of you are the backbone of our technological society as far as my experience goes and you just ain't getting this because you've not looked back into history.

    Go back and look at what the electricians where saying at the turn of the 20th Century at the Royal Society. Go back and look at what von Braun was doing in the US before the second world war - and afterwards. Look at the US patents from around the dawn of the 20th Century - everyone knew.

    Everyone knew that if you stimulated this thing that the electricians called "ether" with very high voltage, very high frequency electrical currents, then you'd get an equal and opposite reaction - power that was thousands of times greater than the piffling force of gravity and, you could also generate massive amounts of electricity if you contorted that conceptual system in the right way. Check out Tunguska in Siberia if you want to see the effects of that.

    When doing your research, you'll find that the Michaelson Morley experiment absolutely discounts the presence of the ether but then, if you dig deeper, you'll find that Michaelson did it again but more rigorously and that countless other physicists have confirmed the results of this experiment that the ether is there.

    Energy is free, it's in front of your nose, it's not something that we have to mine, it's not dependent on a mineral that may become scarce, that's just BS from a cartel that will either put you out of business or kill you, the minute you start telling everyone else about their BS. BTW, you really don't have to worry about me - I've spoofed someone else on this board.

    The ability to build craft that fly at thousands of miles an hour on virtually nothing and not crush their occupants when doing a ninety degree turn at this speed was all proven by these electricians in 1915 - you're just not taught that at school. WAKE UP. Listen very closely to Admiral Byrd's congressional hearing in the 50's after his force was decimated in Antarctica (operation Highjump) - "What we are faced with is craft that can go from pole to pole in minutes" This is on youtube - check it out.

    It's basically nineteenth century electrical engineering that's been buried. So if you see one of these things, don't for a minute think that it's aliens - somebody, somewhere on this planet is manufacturing these devices in volumes that the Nazi's could only dream of (oh yes, there's ample evidence of these things being built in Nazi Germany - and they were electrical, not rockets or jets etc) .

    Imagine if we applied this occult (that just means "hidden from you") technology to computing:

    “My invention consists of a tower for the purpose of receiving and imparting natural electricity, so as to be in constant contact with upper stratum of electricity which surrounds the earth, by tapping which a never failing supply is formed when brought into contact with the earth.”

    William Henry Ward of Auburn, New York - Improvement of Collecting Electricity for Telegraphing &c. Specification forming part of letters Patent No 125356, dated 30th April 1872

    ...and this guy is a nobody - this stuff was common knowledge. So. How do we power a data centre? What's global warming about, apart from a "carbon tax"?

    How about a flying saucer? Well that seems to be a bit more complicated - a DC discharge in the direction you want to go and a high frequency AC current at the opposite end of the craft seems to do the trick. How simple is that? How do we do that? Tesla coils.

    May you have an inspired, deeply techy and Happy New Year

    1. gazthejourno (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: I am outraged by you all

      I come into work and this is the first thing I read in 2015. Here's hoping the rest of the year stays equally insane.

    2. Mystic Megabyte
      FAIL

      Re: I am outraged by you all

      >>How simple is that? How do we do that? Tesla coils.

      So why don't we see you commute to work in a flying car? Do not give me the lame excuse that "they" would get you! Wake up to the real world.

    3. Gordon 10
      WTF?

      Re: I am outraged by you all

      Am I the only one who thinks the meaning of Christmas to you is just that its the prime time to restock your tin foil?

      1. Vic

        Re: I am outraged by you all

        the meaning of Christmas to you is just that its the prime time to restock your tin foil?

        You get the extra-wide turkey stuff...

        Vic.

    4. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: I am outraged by you all

      Dont worry, I've managed to trace "AC" and he is in fact undergoing the standard care and re-habilitation you'd expect from our alien overlor... oops the CIA :)

      On a more serious note , I'd advise our "AC" to goto his doctor and talk to him about paranoia and how it can affect your thinking processes as I've known one of these tinfoil conspiracy nuts (he was into aliens and the "10th planet" bullcrap) and he became increasingly unhinged as us solid engeering types who demand proof, demostrated things like what happens when an earth sized planet on a 3000 yr eccentric orbit interacts with the solar system over 4 billion years.....

    5. Yugguy

      Re: I am outraged by you all

      Well I gave you an upvote. No one else seems to have a sense of humour.

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I am outraged by you all

      Someone showed us a copy of Psychic News when I was in the 6th form and it had stuff much like this in it. Our physics master said that you could, kind of, guess at the school level textbooks the author had consulted and completely misunderstood.

      Any electricians at the Royal Society were installing the electric light, by the way.

    7. stu 4

      Re: I am outraged by you all

      wow.

      El Reg - I known it's anonymous, but I'm sure you know who posted this…

      please please offer them a weekly column,

    8. Mark 85

      Re: I am outraged by you all

      Have an upvote for bringing some humor and some tidbits to these august pages and I hope that whatever you were drinking New Year's Eve never, ever comes my way.

    9. Nigel 11

      Re: I am outraged by you all

      I'll assume that this is intended as a sarcastic mick-take of a typical loon's ranting, rather than being the real thing.

      ... power that was thousands of times greater than the piffling force of gravity

      Not so much comparing apples and oranges, as apples and furious green ideas.

      BTW if you learn how to do a meaningful comparison between the electromagnetic force and the gravitational force, you will discover that the electromagnetic force is of the order of ten to the power forty times stronger, rather than mere thousands. That is one of the most surprising facts about the universe we live in. Nobody has the faintest idea why, other than it being quite clear that if it weren't so, we wouldn't be here.

    10. Anonymous (Noel) Coward
      Alien

      Re: I am outraged by you all

      Silly bugger! L.Ron Hubbard KNOWS who it was!

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I think the other 50%

    was the Flying Spaghetti Monster, praise his noodly goodness!. **

    And in response to AC who is enraged by us all - do you SERIOUSLY think that none of us have an interest in history? That none of us have read the exact same things that you have? There are some seriously bright and knowledgable folk here*, quite a few of whom have marked anti-establishment tendencies, so if there were any factual basis in the stuff you're talking about, if it actually worked, then you can bet your boots that someone here would have offered proof of it by now or, more likely, made billions marketing the technology. Occams Razor says that you're almost certainly just plain wrong but can't admit it to yourself.

    *I am not among them. Still smarting over not immediately seeing the flaws with the Solar Roadways lark :-}

    **OK, I know it was probably the Russians really!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I think the other 50%

      Occam's razor now has 4 blades for a closer shave of bunk hypotheses. Progress!

  17. spellucci
    Alert

    UFO at Otis AFB

    There is a family story from the '60s or '70s about a man in Bourne, MA, USA who covered a box kite in aluminium foil, attached battery-powered lights, and flew it after dark on a r-e-a-l-l-y long string. He was listening to the police radio to see who noticed. The nearby Otis Air Force Base, that's who. He reeled the kite in rather quickly when the Air Force scrambled two fighter jets to intercept it.

    1. Nigel 11

      Re: UFO at Otis AFB

      Wonder if that's true.

      There's a similar UK tale about the bored traffic cops who pointed a speed gun at an RAF fighter doing low-level attack training. The radar gun stopped working. Permanently. Later they were advised, over a pint, "don't do that".

      "Why?"

      "Well, hypothetically, if the pilot had left the electronic countermeasures switched on, it would retalliate with a targetted electromagnetic pulse milliseconds later ..."

      "... so that's why our speed gun failed? ..."

      "... and next to that switch there's another one that enables the non-electronic countermeasures. Homing missiles ..."

      "Oh..."

      "Time for another round?"

    2. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad

      Re: UFO at Otis AFB

      "He was listening to the police radio to see who noticed. The nearby Otis Air Force Base, that's who."

      AFB using open police channels for outgoing comms? Doubtful. Unless they asked to scramble some police cruisers.

  18. John 98

    We of the Flat Earth Society know better

    There are no aliens - the limited size of the dome over the earth precludes their existence. The unexplained sightings were either dragons or the KGB.

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    SO......ALL THOSE ANAL PROBES WERE 'JUST FOR FUN', WERE THEY?....

    ...i mean, there was a lot of it going on back then weren't there? I think its time for an inquiry into 'Historical Anal Probing'......dunno who would chair such a thing?... ... . maybe Willlam Shatner? Come on, we need to think of the victims here!!!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: SO......ALL THOSE ANAL PROBES WERE 'JUST FOR FUN', WERE THEY?....

      You may find those probes corresponded to the mysterious disappearance of £50 from your bank account as well.

      Maybe if you laid off the drugs and stopped paying strangely dressed men for services, the aliens would disappear as well?

  20. Tom 13

    Obligatiory Swamp Gas posting

    http://bandtrace.com/Leslie+Fish/track/Swamp+Gas

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Must have been

    Man eating Illuminati reptilians from outer space!

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Reptilians?

    See the documentary "Iron Sky 2" for more information.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Kelly Johnson Case

    The irony in the CIA's admission is that on 16 December 1953 Kelly Johnson -- the lead designer of the CIA's U2 spy plane -- his wife, and one of Johnson's test crews, who were flying a Lockhead WV2 aircraft in the same vicinity, spotted a UFO that hovered over the Santa Barbara Channel for 6 to 7 minutes.

    Johnson's conclusion after his sighting: "I am now more convinced than ever, that such devices exist, and I have some highly technical converts in this belief."

    The Air Force's conclusion? "Johnson, his wife, and the airplane crew had seen a lenticular cloud."

    http://thenightsky.org/kelly.html

  24. techcafe

    speaking of the CIA, here's an interesting interview with former Canadian diplomat, Peter Dale Scott, talking about the 'Deep State': http://youtu.be/fMNlVhoLwTw

  25. I&I

    Stats Contradict CIA !!!

    (Dunno, I wasn't there, but...)

    From [http://www.theufochronicles.com/2015/01/ex-navy-scientist-slams-cia-ufo-claims.html]

    as of 2015-01-05 ~11:00

    < pruned <<

    The CIA claims (of a ‘tremendous’ increase in reports of UFOs when the U2 spy plane started flying) are wrong according to former US Navy optical physicist, Dr Bruce Maccabee, who says the numbers of sightings per month received by the USAF’s Project Blue Book totally contradict the CIA claim.

    The number of sighting reports in July, before the U2 started flying, was 63. In August, when U2 test flights began, the number was 68, an increase of only 5 or about 8%. Then, in September, there was a decrease to 57 reports, a drop of almost 20%, even though the U2 continued to fly. Averaged over a longer time the statistics show little or no impact of the U2 flights on sighting rate.

    In his book, "The FBI CIA UFO Connection" published last September, Dr. Maccabee shows that the number of UFO sightings reports for 10 months preceding the first U2 flights is the same as the number of reports collected during the ten months following the first flight.

    ‘These statistics clearly do not support the claim of a ‘tremendous’ increase in UFO reports when the U2 began flying,’ Dr Maccabee said.

    >>>

    Sent from my iPhone. No, really...

  26. Tikimon
    Devil

    Attitude is everything about UFO "controversies"

    Sensible attitude: "Hey, what's that light in the sky? I don't know what it is. Might be a new aircraft or something." No news coverage? No problem, it was only a light in the sky.

    UFO Conspiracy Lover: "Hey, what's that light in the sky? IT MUST BE AN ALIEN SPACESHIP!" No news coverage? Obviously, there's a cover up!

    The former need no CIA explanation. The latter will never accept ANY explanation, because they want it to be space aliens and don't care about the boring old truth. A century ago it was fairies, before that succubi and demons. Some folks just don't WANT the truth.

  27. John Nuttall

    I was at a millenium party near to an RAF base and got talking to a pilot from there who was part of the rapid response team whose job it was to investigate intrusions into British air space. I asked him if they ever came across UFOs and he replied that they encountered them regularly. He said that recently they'd been scrambled to investigate a fast moving unidentified object that had been detected by radar, as they approached it accelerated to a speed well in excess of a velocity achievable by any plane that he was aware of and vanished. Of course he could have just been having a bit of fun with me after a couple of beers but he was so offhand rather than sensational that I believed him.

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