Government and military
What the CIA, FBI, NSA, DIA and ODNI collected, concluded and released. 148 events, newest first.
GovernmentApr 2011
The FBI launched The Vault, an online reading room for released records, including its UFO file and a 1950 memo by agent Guy Hottel relaying a secondhand saucer-crash story. Some outlets called it Roswell proof; the FBI later said it never investigated the claim and saw no Roswell link.
Photo: Guy Hottel, Public domain
Government3 Mar 2011
A National Archives release of MoD UFO files showed that Defence Intelligence UFO files for 1980-82, which would have covered the Rendlesham Forest case, had been found destroyed in a 2000 search. Archives consultant David Clarke said the main Rendlesham file was already public.
Photo: N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0
Government2011
Interviewees told AARO that KONA BLUE was a DHS compartment for retrieved non-human material. AARO found it was a 2011 proposed special access program, pushed by people from DIA's AAWSAP/AATIP, that DHS's deputy secretary disapproved; it never got funding or material.
Photo: U.S. Coast Guard, Public domain
Whistleblowers2011
John B. Alexander, a retired Army colonel who had asked about UFOs inside intelligence and defense circles, published a book saying he found no secret government UFO program or cover-up, while still treating some sightings as real and unexplained.
Photo: US mil, Public domain
Media15 Jul 2010
Syfy launched Fact or Faked: Paranormal Files, in which a team led by former FBI agent Ben Hansen tried to recreate viral photos and videos, including UFO footage, to judge whether they were hoaxes or unexplained.
Skinwalker Ranch11 Mar 2010
A Defense Intelligence Reference Document, Anomalous Acute and Subacute Field Effects on Human Biological Tissues, produced under DIA's AAWSAP program, studied burns and neurological effects reported after close encounters and proposed electromagnetic fields as a cause. DIA later released it.
Photo: Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government24 Jun 2009
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote to Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn asking for a restricted special access program for parts of the DIA aerospace study he called AATIP, citing sensitive findings. A November 2009 DIA review found no justification for the protection.
Photo: United States Congress, Public domain
GovernmentSep 2008
The Defense Intelligence Agency contracted Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies of Las Vegas for the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, officially a study of future aerospace threats. It produced dozens of technical papers; funding of about $22 million ended in 2012.
Photo: Bill Ingalls, Public domain
Skinwalker Ranch18 Aug 2008
The Defense Intelligence Agency publicly posted a small-business request for proposals for the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, seeking studies of possible breakthrough aerospace technologies. The contract that followed went to Bigelow's BAASS.
Photo: Antony-22, CC BY-SA 4.0
Whistleblowers2007
Jesse Marcel Jr., son of Roswell intelligence officer Jesse Marcel Sr., published The Roswell Legacy, describing how as a 10-year-old he was shown debris his father brought home in 1947. The military has said the debris came from a balloon; his account rests on childhood memory.
Photo: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Public domain
GovernmentMay 2006
After a Freedom of Information request, Britain's Ministry of Defence released Project Condign, a Defence Intelligence Staff study of UFO reports completed in December 2000. It said sightings could be explained by natural causes such as meteors and unusual atmospheric conditions.
Photo: ArildV, CC BY-SA 3.0
Media14 Sep 1997
Gillian Anderson won the Primetime Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a drama series for playing FBI agent Dana Scully on The X-Files.
Photo: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0
Government1997
Historian Gerald K. Haines's study in the CIA journal Studies in Intelligence said agency officials estimated that U-2 and later OXCART flights accounted for over half of UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s, and that the Air Force made misleading statements to protect them.
Photo: NASA Glenn Research Center, Public domain
GovernmentSep 1995
The American Institutes for Research reviewed the government's remote viewing program, which grew out of 1970s work by Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ at SRI. Its September 1995 report found no use for intelligence operations and the program was ended.
Government28 Jul 1995
Answering Rep. Steven Schiff, the General Accounting Office reported finding only two 1947 records on the Roswell crash, an FBI teletype describing a balloon with a radar reflector and a base history. It found Roswell base outgoing messages from 1946-49 destroyed, with no record of who approved it.
Photo: Congressional Pictorial Directory, Public domain
MediaJul 1994
Showtime aired Roswell, a TV film directed by Jeremy Kagan with Kyle MacLachlan as an Air Force intelligence officer revisiting the 1947 events and Martin Sheen in support. It dramatized claims that a flying saucer was recovered and the story covered up.
Photo: Roswell Daily Record, Public domain
Media9 Aug 1989
20th Century Fox released James Cameron's The Abyss, in which oil-rig divers helping the U.S. Navy reach a lost nuclear submarine encounter a non-human intelligence living deep in the ocean, an early big-screen take on underwater unidentified craft.
Photo: Towpilot, CC BY-SA 3.0
Government1987
Papers describing 'Majestic 12', a supposed 1947 committee handling a Roswell crash, were published by UFO researchers in 1987. The FBI closed an inquiry after learning the document was 'completely bogus', and the National Archives found no record of it beyond an unrelated 1954 memo.
Photo: Federal Bureau of Investigation, Public domain
Media1987
British author Timothy Good published Above Top Secret, a long compilation of official documents and testimony arguing that governments worldwide were hiding what they knew about UFOs. A 1997 CIA history cited it as a source of cover-up claims, and skeptic reviewers faulted its rigor.
Government8 Mar 1982
Citizens Against UFO Secrecy sued the National Security Agency over withheld UFO-related records. The group lost in district court, the D.C. Circuit affirmed in November 1981, and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case in March 1982.
Photo: National Security Agency, Public domain
Media14 Dec 1980
Episode 12 of Carl Sagan's PBS series Cosmos, 'Encyclopaedia Galactica', opened with a dramatized retelling of Betty and Barney Hill's 1961 abduction claim, which Sagan then picked apart, before turning to the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence.
Photo: NASA/JPL, Public domain
Government1980
Retired FBI agent Kenneth Rommel, funded by a federal Law Enforcement Assistance Administration grant through the New Mexico First Judicial District Attorney, investigated mutilation reports and concluded the damage matched normal predator and scavenger activity, finding no support for UFO theories.
Sightings5 Mar 1979
The Spanish Air Force's air operations command compiled a 234-page intelligence file on strange phenomena reported over the Canary Islands on 5 March 1979. The file was declassified in 1995 and is published by the Defence Ministry.
GovernmentDec 1978
After a Freedom of Information Act suit by the Arizona group Ground Saucer Watch, the CIA released roughly 1,000 pages of UFO-related records. The group said they showed agency interest in UFO reports long after the CIA said its study ended in 1952; the claims were the group's reading.
Media26 Nov 1977
Around 5:10 pm, a distorted voice claiming to speak for an alien intelligence replaced Southern Television's news sound for almost six minutes, apparently by jamming the Hannington transmitter. The IBA investigated; no culprit was ever identified, and it is generally treated as a hoax.
Photo: Matthew Prior, CC BY-SA 4.0
