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On April 4, 1949, FBI agents in Utah sent a cable marked “urgent” to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. It said an Army guard at the Ogden Supply Depot, a Logan policeman and a Utah Highway Patrol officer in Mantua each saw from miles apart a UFO — which they said exploded over Utah.

Under the title “Flying Discs,” the cable said they “saw a silver colored object high up approaching the mountains at Sardine Canyon” that “appeared to explode in a rash of fire. Several residents at Trenton … [reported] seeing what appeared to be two aerial explosions followed by falling object.”

That and other documents show the FBI was investigating whether UFOs were real, and it figured they could be. Such documents are now available in “The Vault,” vault.fbi.gov, a revamped FBI website for documents that have been released through the Freedom of Information Act and have been recently or often requested.

Besides talking about Utah UFOs, other Utah-related documents on the website look at such things as FBI snooping into whether the Salt Lake City NAACP had been infiltrated by communists; a death threat in Utah against Lady Bird Johnson; and Hoover lambasting W. Cleon Skousen — a Utahn who has become an icon of the tea party movement.

“The new website significantly increases the number of available FBI files, enhances the speed at which the files can be accessed, and contains a robust search capability,” David Hardy, chief of the FBI’s Record/Information Dissemination Section, said in a statement.

One document shows that the Logan UFO incident occurred two weeks after the FBI told bureaus that a “reliable and confidential source” reported that “flying discs are believed to be man-made missiles rather than natural phenomenon. It has also been determined that for approximately the past four years the USSR [Soviet Union] has been engaged in experimentation on an unknown type of flying disc.”

Documents show that an earlier UFO sighting had been investigated in Logan in September 1947. It said numerous witnesses told the FBI they saw “flying discs” in formation that were “circling the city at a high rate of speed.”

Most interestingly, on March 22, 1950, Guy Hottel, the agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, sent a memo reporting that an Air Force source said that flying saucers had crashed near Ros­well, N.M., and had been recovered.

“They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots,” it said.

Documents on the new website also show such things as a letter that Hoover wrote to a nun in 1962 criticizing Skousen, a former FBI agent who then was writing books and giving speeches on communism and conservative principles that later would make him vocally admired by many tea party leaders today, including TV and radio personality Glenn Beck.

“Former Special Agents of the FBI are not necessarily experts on communism. Some of them have sought to capitalize on their former employment with this Bureau for the purpose of establishing themselves as such authorities,” Hoover said in replying to questions from Sister Mary Shaun about Skousen.

“I am firmly convinced there are too many self-styled experts on communism, without valid credentials and without any access whatsoever to classified, factual data, who are engaging in rumor mongering and hurling false and wholly unsubstantiated allegations against people whose views differ from their own. This makes more difficult the task of the professional investigator,” Hoover wrote.

Other documents show the FBI in the 1950s was looking at whether the Salt Lake NAACP was infiltrated by communists, and was keeping track of its leaders and their backgrounds.

A memo said the Communist Party wanted the NAACP “to win leadership among negro organizations,” and “various attempts have been made by the CP [Communist Party] to infiltrate and dominate certain NAACP branches through the country.”

Another document shows that a threat against Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady, was sent to the FBI’s Salt Lake City office in 1988 in an anonymous letter saying she “must die.” Agents found it was likely sent by a New Mexico woman who was mentally ill, and no charges were filed against her.

Source: Salt Lake Tribune

A 31-year-old UFO mystery was nothing more than a schoolboy science experiment, according to a man who has claimed responsibility for lights seen hovering in the Manawatu sky in the 1970s.

On a clear April evening in 1979 an orange light was spotted traveling in the night sky from Aokautere toward Hokowhitu.

Government documents released last week put this unexplained light down to a radar balloon “in the hands of people outside the meteorological service”.

These official X-files show the light was spotted early in the evening on April 20, while other orange lights were seen in the region six days later.

Malcolm McCrea was then a 16-year-old fifth form pupil at Awatapu College.

He said that at school, a science teacher would build hot air balloons from tissue paper, cardboard, wire and cotton wool.

Using heat from a Bunsen burner, the balloons would be released into the atmosphere.

About April or May 1979 those pupils decided the balloons would look better at night, so McCrea and his friends would release them into the atmosphere – powered by burning meths.

By stuffing different coloured tissue paper into them, the pupils could make a virtual kaleidoscope in the night sky, with the balloons ranging in size from a shoebox to a fridge.

The balloons would usually meander through the sky until an airstream caught them and made them rocket away – looking much like a silent alien aircraft speeding into the distance.

“We would often release several balloons at the same time, hence seeing something in a V-formation meant they were all caught in the same airstream,” McCrea said.

Oddly enough, one of the April 1979 sightings was of three lights traveling in such a formation. There were also plenty of other reports in the media about unexplained lights in the night sky.

“We thought it was very funny.”

McCrea, who now lives on the Kapiti Coast, said he released about eight or nine balloons himself – as did about 15 other people.

This likely explanation for Palmerston North’s 1979 sightings did not surprise New Zealand sceptics spokeswoman Vicki Hyde.

While most sceptics would not rule out the possibility of other life forms existing somewhere, most possible UFO sightings could be explained.

“The bulk of [sightings] are from sincere people who have seen something they can’t explain,” she said.

“You don’t have to be foolish to be fooled.” Ms Hyde encourages people who see unexplained objects to keep an open mind about what they’re looking at.

Another UFO sighting in Palmerston North happened in June 1972, when 17-year-old Jon Watson looked outside of his Crew Crescent flat and saw three silver objects flying 1000 feet overhead. “I got a fright at first,” he told the Manawatu Standard at the time.

“We followed the three spaceships with our eyes for about a quarter of an hour. They were following each other and were quite close together.”

Fourteen-year-old Freyberg High School pupil Gregory Key saw three “spinning silver objects” above Pahiatua on June 15 the same year.

Source: stuff.co.nz

The Argentine Air Force has created a commission to record and investigate reports of unidentified flying objects (UFO) in the South American country’s airspace, a spokesman told AFP Wednesday.

The Commission for the Investigation of Airspace Phenomenon “is in the process of being formed,” said Captain Mariano Mohaupt.

Officials said the air force already holds records of reported UFO sighting, but the interdisciplinary commission — involving meteorologists, air traffic controllers and civilian pilots alongside military authorities — would formalize the data keeping.

Other South American countries including neighboring Brazil and Uruguay and have previously moved to record alleged UFO sightings.

Argentine authorities urged military and civilian pilots as well as air traffic controllers to report their experiences and, if possible, to send any documenting evidence.

Source: Agence France Presse

The Air Force has released thousands of top secret papers about UFOs.

More than 2000 pages of material dating back to the 1950s documents files of correspondence on apparent sightings from 1952 to 2009.

Communications about sightings began in 1952 when they were described as UFOs – unidentified flying objects. Later they were called UAS – unidentified aerial sightings.

The files contain reports by sightings of private individuals and military personnel; investigations by Defence and other departments and agencies into the reports; newspaper clippings on UFOs and letters from individuals who claim to be in touch with alien beings and craft.

The redacted files include communications about New Zealand’s most famous UFO footage – filmed 32 years ago – of mysterious lights near the Kaikoura Coast filmed by a TVNZ camera crew.

“It sort of hovered along the treeline, then darted sharply up and to the left,” Lloyd McFadden said.

Papers show that investigators believe a squid boat, atmospheric conditions and a possible meteor could have been behind the lights.

But UFO sighting researcher Suzanne Hansen said the lights were obviously not Venus, a squid boat or muttonbirds flying south.

“It is obviously something else we can’t explain,” Hansen told ONE News.

“We don’t know what it is, but it is certainly something that is unidentified and non-conventional.”

The complete Air Force investigation into the mystery is just one of the files among letters, theories, reports and drawings about UFOs.

The papers have been held by Archives New Zealand, which was set to make them available in February this year after requests from the public. They were originally supposed to be held until 2080.

The Defence Force said it needed to remove personal identification from the files in order to comply with the Privacy Act, and has now done that, deleting all names of military personnel.

Much of the 12 volumes contains correspondence of a fairly outlandish nature but there is also a 1961 sighting from a respected Air Force officer who insists he saw a mysterious cigar-shaped object, with what appeared to be a cockpit and undercarriage – a sighting that baffled him and his superiors.

Hansen, who has been investigating UFOs for more than 35 years, has been campaigning for the documents’ release after witnessing numerous “sightings” in her life. She said the move is a step toward openness on the topic.

Hansen said her first sighting was when she was eight and it was also observed by hundreds of people in South Auckland and down through Waikato.

She said the most striking sighting for her was in 1995, and this was also witnessed by a senior air traffic controller at Hamilton Airport. There were a number of sightings of “this unusual light and object” in that time period, she said.

Hansen has not yet seen the Defence files but hopes they will reveal more information on major sightings around New Zealand, especially Air Force reports from pilots and military sightings that have occurred.

She said the body of evidence worldwide from aviation, pilots, the military, astronauts and scientists confirm the reality of this phenomenon.

“It is sufficient to make us realise there is something going on that the public needs to look into more deeply and we need to try to understand,” said Hansen.

Defence does not share the view that we are visited from outer space, or covertly by aircraft or machines of potentially unfriendly nations.

But as far as believers are concerned, the truth about whether this country has been visited by aliens is still out there.

Source: TVNZ

(Reuters) - Britain’s Ministry of Defense has had a close encounter of the credit crunch kind.

After more than 50 years of service, the ministry has shut down its UFO investigation unit, saying it could no longer justify the cost of running the service.

The ministry said it had found no evidence of a threat to Britain or proof of the existence of extra-terrestrials, despite the public sending thousands of reportings of UFOs to a ministry hotline and email address.

It said it held no opinion on the existence or otherwise of alien life, but added it had “no specific capability for identifying the nature of such sightings.”

“There is no defense benefit in such investigation and it would be an inappropriate use of defense resources,” it said.

Any threat to the country’s air space would be spotted by radar checks and dealt with by Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft, a ministry spokesman said.

Resources would be focused on more important priorities, including the war in Afghanistan, where Britain has 9,000 troops fighting Taliban insurgents, as part of NATO forces, he added.

The dedicated UFO officer who dealt with the reports has been re-assigned to another post, saving 44,000 pounds ($73,000) a year.