9.1 Summary Review of Government Documents

of July 21, 1999). Let’s hope that the present summary will help clarify the debate.

Gildas Bourdais

9.0 APPENDIX AI. UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS

RELATED TO UFOs

9.1 Summary Review of Government Documents

The documents included here in Appendix I are only those referenced in the text of this document and were selected to: 1) specifically support sightings reports or 2) support specific points in the discussion. Many important US Government UFO documents that we have collected (well over 1000 pages) are not in this briefing summary since including all such documents would have been impractical. Web sites such as that run by the Black Vault116 have available many thousands of pages of government documents relating to UFO issues (mostly obtained from the government through FOIA, the Freedom of Information Act117). Although many of the documents may be difficult to read, the sharp-eyed reader will quickly realize the extent of the government’s and the military’s deep interest and involvement in UFO issues. Not only is their continued interest obvious, but also their continued desire to keep the information from the public through a combination of secrecy, and deliberate misinformation and disinformation (this process was discussed in the position paper entitled: “Unacknowledged”).

It should be noted that for nearly every reported observation, there are a slew of pronouncements by “experts” and officials dismissing the observation. However, all these statements are basically invalidated by a single phenomenon: the continued action of our government to classify documents such as those in the appendices, as secret, and to maintain that secrecy up to and in some cases in the face of the unprecedented power of the Freedom of Information Act. If there were nothing to these sightings, there would be no need for secrecy!

An excellent example of government agency duplicity about their interest in UFOs is described by John Greenewald on the BlackVault web site118 in which he quotes the following Air Force standard position statement, quoted from a letter he received from the Air Force:

Regarding UFO/UAO phenomenon, we have no documentation, archived or otherwise, regarding this type phenomenon and have not documented this type of information or maintained a database on same since the official closing of “Project Blue Book119” in 1969.

From the evidence gathered here we know that the Air Force did have interest in UFOs prior to the closing of “Project Blue Book” since Air Force Regulation AFR 200-2120 (1954) describes

116 Web site at: http://www.blackvault.com 117 FOIA-Freedom of Information Act. Set up by Congress in XXXX to allow citizens to obtain xxxxxxxx 118 Web site at: http://www.blackvault.com 119 Project Blue Book was an Air Force sponsored research project to collect and investigate UFO sightings from March, 1952 to December, 1969 and followed its predecessors, Projects Sign and Grudge which had similar tasks. 120 See Appendix AI (Document A1.20). ). Full copy in PDF format is available on the AFDPO web site at: http://afpubs.hq.af.mil