Thursday, June 19, 2003
FBI posts the real "X files"
The truth, it seems, is out there. And it can be found where special agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully might never look--on the FBI's own Web site.
The agency has been quietly posting documents on the Net about reported unidentified flying objects, alleged alien abductions, and unexplained animal mutilations. More than 1,600 pages dating back to the 1940s are now public on the site, although most contain blacked-out passages and missing names.
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) files may not reveal all there is to know about the possibility of life on other planets, but they give true believers--and even skeptics--a peek at the government's investigations into decades of mysterious sightings.
Included in the batch are random reports, such as a September 19, 1947 memo to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover regarding "flying discs" near Seattle, Washington. "[A man] sighted a silver object streaking across the sky," the memo states. "It was observed by these three people while they drove from 20 to 30 miles. All three people saw it, they decided they must be 'seeing things.'"
There also is only one document about the infamous craft that reportedly crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. A July 1947 memo to the FBI office in Cincinnati about the craft states, "The object resembles a high-altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector…Disc and balloon being transported to Wright Field by special place examination…National interest in case…National Broadcasting Company, Associated Press, and others attempting to break story of location of disc today."
On the site there are 12 pages from "Project Blue Book," the Air Force program to investigate UFOs, which was shut down in 1969 on grounds that "there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as 'unidentified' are extraterrestrial."
Some say the FOIA documents actually discount the Air Force's assertion in Project Blue Book.
"The Air Force got out of the UFO reporting and investigating business, publicly at least, in 1969. [The] FOIA documents disprove their contentions that they lost interest in UFOs," said Jeff Westover, who is compiling UFO reports in Michigan.
Even with the online release of the FBI documents, it's hard to find a lot of information about UFO sightings or extraterrestrial life without the work of nongovernmental groups, he said.
Still, Andrus of the Mutual UFO Network suggested that the FBI's Web site itself could be part of a bigger government conspiracy.
"The U.S. government has lied for over 50 years about UFOs and now no one wants to be put in the position to admit that," Andrus said. "So they have elected to leak the information out gradually. This latest FBI release is just part of that tactic."
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