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FOIA Freedom of Information Act. This is an American law that allows members of the public to obtain copies of classified documents by having all or parts of the documents declassified by order of a federal judge. The judge may refuse the declassification of a document if it is necessary for the document to remain classified because it affects national security.
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The June 1997 issue of Popular Mechanics talks in its cover story about how the Area 51 base (Groom Lake and surroundings) has been moved to a new location. This movement of "Area 51" of course refers to the movement of the secret testing, not the actual base. Extensive public scrutiny of the region has apparently taken its toll on the facility. The article goes on to unveil Michael Army Airfield in Utah as the probable "new" home of Area 51. The base shyly resides about 80 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, in the heart of the desert. Operations in the Utah facility may begin as early as 1999. |
Did the U.S. government lie to the American public about thousands of UFO sightings which took place during the "Cold War"? A newly published article in the CIA journal, "Studies in Intelligence", explains how the military misled citizens about top secret spy planes that were often mistaken for alien craft.
The CIA-published article discloses how U.S. officials lied about strange craft witnessed by Americans. The article, "CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-1990," was prepared by historian Gerald Haines, now working for the National Reconnaissance Office.
The report was commissioned by President Clinton's first CIA director, James Woolsey. According to Haines, a classified version of his report was issued by the CIA about two years ago. He makes the assurance that the CIA "removed very little" information from the study before releasing it to the public. Of course. The Haines report begins, appropriately enough, in 1947. This was of course the year the CIA was founded, and the year an unusual object crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. Haines goes on to make his first major allegation that the Air Force tried to debunk UFO sightings. He referes to an early Air Force UFO investigation, Project Grudge (the predecessor to the more widely known Project Blue Book). He goes on to address how the purpose of these reports were to alleviate public anxiety over UFOs via a public relations campaign designed to persuade the public that UFOs constituted nothing unusual or extraordinary. The CIA closely monitored the Air Force effort, according to Haines. Haines makes extensive use of CIA internal records to construct a detailed accounting of how the agency's top officials, including at least two of its directors, pursued the UFO issue for reasons of national security. |
Agency officials purposefully kept files on UFOs to a minimum to avoid creating records that might mislead the public if released, Haines reports. Air Force and CIA officials agreed that outside knowledge of Agency interest in UFOs would make the problem more serious. Haines goes on to allege that over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the United States. The Air Force was forced to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public, once again, in the name of national security. |
So what does all this mean? Well, this is a pretty signifigant report. The Government is admiting for the first time that they have indeed taken part in a cover-up of information. They maintain, however; that the reason for their deceit was a matter of national security, and that 50% of the sightings were just top-secret spy planes. So what were the other 50%?
They remain... unidentified.