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The CIA just made it a little easier to find out.
Earlier this month, January 2021, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified 700 files about unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) aka unidentified flying objects (UFOs), according to multiple media reports including Fox, the Daily Mail, and the Black Vault, clearinghouse of declassified government documents with an emphasis on UFOs.
On Thursday, Jan . 7, a video purportedly of a UFO flying over Northampton, Massachusetts, hit the web. Joe Douglass posted a nearly 2-minute video of a “possible UFO” to YouTube. As of Thursday, Jan. 14, the video had been viewed more than 1,300 views.
The video shows what looks like a white, occasionally translucent hexagon spinning and flashing various colors against a completely black background. The item appears to move in circles as well as up and down, left and right, and seems larger at some times than others. The colors flashing include blue, green, purple, and white.
Douglass said he reported the sighting to the National UFO Reporting Center and the Massachusetts National Guard but has not heard back from either organization.
UFOs: FACT OR FICTION
While they are available, searching the CIA’s declassified UFO documents is difficult.
It’s not clear by searching the CIA’s online catalog - “UFOs: Fact or Fiction?” - which of its 1,730 files on UFOs were recently released. The “lookup by date” function had not been updated to include 2021 and a random sample of the documents showed that not all of them actually contained UFO information.
Among the files that were viewed by the Daily Voice that did contain UFO information, were fascinating interdepartmental letters about UFO investigations, concerns about public perception, redacted accounts of UFOs, records of UFO sightings across the world, and reports on what scientists, as well as armchair alien watchers, were up to. Some of the documents go back as far as the 1940s.
Among the CIA UFO documents are “German Scientist’s Article on ‘Flying Discs,’” “Light Phenomena East of Tashkent,” “Minutes of Branch Chief’s Meeting of 11 August 1952,” “Saucers Sighted Over Spain and French Africa,” and “Flying Saucers Problem.”
It does not appear that the CIA believes a UFO from another planet has ever been spotted by Earthlings, as the agency describes the UFO sightings in its collection as “unsubstantiated.”
HARTFORD PROJECT BLUE BOOK
The Black Vault website makes searching the CIA's UFO information a bit easier. One of the most recent declassified CIA UFO reports posted to Black Vault is an account of “Project Blue Book” a UFO sighting over Hartford, Connecticut in September 1960.
In the case file, a witness described an object falling “like a green flame from the sky. It was shaped like a cone about 1ft high. Upon landing it started a fire in the backyard shed of the property."
The Air Force determined the item was “slag,” a glass-like byproduct of separated materials. However, a discovery of similar material in Woodbridge, Connecticut, raised doubts for at least one Southern Connecticut professor of Earth Sciences who wrote the CIA in 1960 seeking more information.
To check out more declassified CIA UFO documents, visit the CIA and Black Vault online.
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