(NEXSTAR) – From reports of flying saucers to mysterious bomb blasts, the CIA has opened its catalogue of intelligence on reports of unidentified flying objects to the public.
UFOs: Fact or Fiction contains dozens of downloadable files on sightings and unexplained phenomena from around the world. The documents cover five decades of research, from the 1940s to the early 1990s. It’s not clear, however, if the CIA has included all their files; the agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In one report from June of 1996, two Lithuanian police officers working near the border reported seeing “a spherical object hanging and ‘pulsing,’ alternately shrinking and expanding” around 12:30 a.m. that morning. They also described “a strange sound like an electric or electronic crackle.”
The object rose higher in the air when they approached to investigate and flew away after 30 minutes, according to the report, “but it was noted that the tall grass around the place over which the sphere had ‘hung’ was flattened to a radius of 10 meters.” Local scientists did not have an opinion on the reported sighting, the document says.
The catalogue consists mainly of CIA cables “reporting unsubstantiated UFO sightings in the foreign press and intra-Agency memos about how the Agency handled public inquiries about the UFO sightings.”
Another example, from 1965, described a sighting of “red, green and yellow flying saucers … seen flying over Decepcion Island for two hours by Argentine, Chilean and British bases in Antarctica. The flying saucers were also seen flying in formation over the South Orkney islands in quick circles.”
There has been renewed interest in UFOs, or “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” the term used by the government, after a provision in the December COVID relief and government spending bill gave U.S. intelligence agencies six months to release what they know about extraterrestrial realm.
The provision was tucked into the committee comment section of the Intelligence Authorization Act for the 2021 fiscal year. That act was contained in the overall relief bill.
Now, intelligence officials have about 180 days from the signing of the bill to give an unclassified report about the aircrafts. The report needs to contain analysis of any UFO data as well as name any possible security threats they pose.