The CIA has released all publicly available U.S. government documents collected over three decades about unidentified flying objects (UFOs), which can now be downloaded by curious users.
According to reports, the vast treasure trove of data on UFOs includes more than 2,700 pages of information collected and recorded by government agencies over decades, with some released documents dating back to the 1980s.
The information has been released thanks to numerous requests made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) over the past 25 years.
The downloadable archives are available on the website The Black Vault, which has collected all records of UFO sightings. The site’s founder, John Greenewald Jr. purchased a disk that the CIA claims contains the complete archives, but Greenewald notes that “there may not be a way to fully verify that.”
“Research by The Black Vault will continue to see if additional documents are discovered within the CIA’s holdings,” Greenewald added.
The U.S. government has been increasingly open in its discussions of UFOs since September 2019, when the U.S. Navy admitted that widespread video footage taken by Navy pilots that allegedly showed UFOs flying through the sky actually depicted “unknown” objects flying into U.S. airspace.
I’m glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available. The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications. The American people deserve to be informed.
— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) April 27, 2020
Although officials admitted that they were baffled by the unknown flying objects, they also admit that previous encounters with them have been numerous. They also said that rather than calling them “UFOs,” they prefer the term unidentified aerial phenomena or UAPs.
The Guardian reports that a series of bizarre incidents are included in the documents, some of which are difficult to decipher and extremely disorganized.
One document reports a series of unexplained explosions in a Russian city, while another first-hand account reports a sighting of an unknown phenomenon in the sky near Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.
WordsSideKick.com has also reviewed the files and reports that the documents relate to a series of other incidents, including a “1976 account of the then assistant deputy director for science and technology of the government, who hand-delivered a mysterious piece of information about a UFO.
However, Greenewald expressed annoyance with the way the agency packaged the documents, including the fact that they were burned to CD-ROM, a medium he called ‘obsolete’.
“The CIA has made it IMMEDIATELY difficult to use their data in any reasonable way,” he wrote to Vice’s Motherboard. “This outdated format makes it very difficult for people to see the documents and use them for any research whatsoever.”
The arrival of the dump comes as UFOlogists and fans of the extraterrestrial eagerly await hearings before Congress, where Pentagon and intelligence officials will report all their findings on UAPs, according to the New York Post.
A provision tucked away in the roughly 5,600-page coronavirus control bill passed in December requires government agencies to “submit a report to the Intelligence and Armed Services Committees of Congress within 180 days on unidentified aerial phenomena.”
Last June, outgoing President Trump told his son Don Trump Jr. that he had heard some “interesting” things about alleged UFOs and the secret Area 51 base near Roswell, New Mexico, which some theorists claim was a crash site for a UFO.
