Over the years – decades, in fact – the CIA has declassified a wealth of UFO-themed documentation. The stash is filled with reports of UFO encounters filed by pilots, police-officers, scientists and members of the public. Many of those same reports were extracted from worldwide newspapers that the CIA carefully scrutinized on a regular basis. While there is no definitive smoking gun in the files, there’s no doubt that the papers demonstrate the longstanding interest – and occasionally the concern – the CIA had about the UFO phenomenon. There are some genuinely intriguing cases in the CIA’s archives, one of which I’m going to bring to your attention today. Dated September 20, 1957 and prepared for the Acting Director of Central Intelligence, it begins as follows:

“As reported by components of the US Air Defense Command, an unidentified flying object (UFO) was tracked by US radars on a relatively straight course from the eastern tip of Long Island to the vicinity of Buffalo. The object was reportedly moving westward at an altitude of 50,000 feet and speed of 2,000 kts. ‘Jamming’ was reported by several radars in this vicinity and westward as far as Chicago. In a subsequent briefing for representatives of the IAC, the US Air Force reported that the original reports had been degraded somewhat by information that: (a) there was an 11 minute break in the tracks; (b) weather conditions in the area were of the type which have in the past produced false radar pips and electronic interference; (c) B-47’s of SAC were in the area near Chicago on an ECM training flight. The ADC has not completed its investigation of this incident, but in any event it now seems clear that the phenomena reported west of Buffalo were not related to the UFO.”

A U-2 Dragon Lady

The report continues: “We have no intelligence on Soviet activities (e.g. long-range air, submarine, or merchant shipping operations) which can be related specifically to this reported event. We believe it unlikely that a Soviet aircraft could conduct a mission at this speed and altitude and return to Bloc territory. However, we credit the USSR with the capability to have a submarine-launched cruise-type missile of low subsonic [supersonic] performance and a range of about 500 n.m., but we have no specific evidence of the existence of such a missile. We have examined possible Soviet motives for launching a one-way vehicle on an operation over the US, and consider that there would be little motivation at this time, except possibly a psychological or retaliatory motive, which we believe is marginal. One-way reconnaissance operations are largely ruled out by the likelihood that the results would be of small value, and the risk of compromise would be very great.”

It’s clear that this case raised eyebrows and was the subject of significant investigation. It may well have been a genuine UFO. There is, however, another possibility. In 1999, Gerald K. Haines – in his position as the historian of the National Reconnaissance Office – wrote a paper titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” It’s now in the public domain, thanks to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. It can be read at the CIA’s website at this link. Haines’ paper detailed the history of how, and why, the CIA became interested and involved in the phenomenon of UFOs. Although Haines covered a period of more than forty years, I will bring your attention to one particular section of his paper. Haines revealed an intriguing connection between UFOs and the U-2 spy plane. On August 4, 1997, the U.K.’s Independent newspaper ran an article titled “US hid spy plane projects behind UFO hysteria.” The article was focused on Haines’ paper.

In part, it stated: “Early U-2s were silver and reflected the sun’s rays and often appeared as fiery objects to people below, Mr. Haines said. They were later painted black. Air force investigators, ‘aware of the secret U-2 flights, tried to explain away such sightings by linking them to natural phenomena such as ice crystals and temperature inversions.’By 1956 the air force internally had clear explanations for 96 per cent of UFO sightings, Mr. Haines wrote, referring to the experimental aircraft. ‘They were careful, however, not to reveal the true cause of the sighting to the public.’ At the height of the Cold War the CIA hid its involvement in studies of UFO sightings because it feared that if word came out it would lead to a national hysteria that could be exploited by the Soviet Union.”

In light of all the above data, it’s possible that this September 1957 case involved a high-flying spy plane – whether the U-2 or another kind – rather than a true UFO. Sometimes, what appears to be a UFO may be something definitively home-grown. And highly secret, too.

Encounters with UFOs or alien entities can be a life-changing experience and elicit a wide range of reactions from the people who experience them. For some it is fear of the unknown, an overwhelming terror induced by seeing something they feel they were not meant to. For others it might be awe and wonder, and still others still might doubt what they have seen at all, trying to stuff the experience into a neat little hole of the logical and rational explanations, regardless of that creeping feeling clawing at the back of their mind that it is anything but. However, humans being humans there is also another reaction, to just open fire and kill them all, and there are actually quite a few accounts of this happening.

There are supposed attacks by humans on UFOs dating back all the way to at least the 1940s, and by far the most famous of these is perhaps the one that occurred on February 25, 1942. On this evening air raid sirens all over the city of Los Angeles, California began blaring, followed by a fierce barrage of anti-aircraft fire lighting up the night sky. Considering that the United States had just entered World War II just months before, this was thought by the terrified populace to be an enemy attack launched by the Japanese. Although officials would later claim that “The Battle of Los Angeles” had been the result of a false alarm and jumpy nerves, of course conspiracy theorists have said that not only is this a cover-up, but that it was not the Japanese at all, but rather UFOs that were being fired upon in a panic. A very famous image used as evidence of this is one circulated in the news at the time which purportedly shows spotlights converging on a UFO in the sky over Los Angeles as tracer fire erupts everywhere. The image has been debated and discussed for years, and although accused of being touched up and hoaxed, still often gets placed on lists of iconic UFO images. Just what is it we are looking at here?

Iconic photo of the Battle of Los Angeles

War time seems to have a lot of these kinds of accounts, and it seems to make sense, what with everyone trigger happy and the tendency for UFOs to seem to be drawn to human military conflict for whatever reasons. Troops in the Vietnam War certainly seem to have experienced this first hand from time to time. One particularly bizarre incident occurred in 1970, at Lone-Jon Island, where a 5-man team of soldiers claimed that they were being hunted by bright lights measuring a mere 4 inches by 4 inches in size. These lights were described as disc-shaped and having what were called “black eyes,” and they were said to be capable of great feats of maneuverability, darting, zig-zagging, and hovering all over the place. The team claimed that when they fired upon the objects they would shift color to an angry glowing red, with the black eye part morphing into a bright green. These intimidating, menacing lights apparently stalked and attacked the team during both daylight and nighttime hours over a period of 5 days, often coming shockingly close, to within 5 feet of the team’s position. One of the men supposedly took several photos of the bizarre incident.

When the men got back from their harrowing ordeal and were debriefed they told of what had happened to them and were reportedly told to forget about it. Their equipment was also searched and some of it confiscated, including the pictures that had been taken. People were brought in to interview them extensively on what they had seen, and although it was unclear who they were, at least one of the men was convinced that they were CIA. Even odder still is that a few months later some American personnel allegedly showed up at the homes of the soldiers’ parents asking about any photographic materials that may have been sent to them. The whole thing adds the layer of a sinister cover-up to the already rather scary events depicted by the report.

American forces don’t seem to have been the only ones dealing with hostilities with UFOs. In a really weird report, in the summer of 1968, a Ranger recon unit was operating along the DMZ in an area that what was referred to as the “North Country” in the early morning hours. The team was wary and on edge, completely attuned to their surroundings, as it had already been established that an enemy Viet Cong unit was positioned on the other side of the hill, so the enemy could have been anywhere creeping about in the jungle around them. At approximately 2AM, the team claimed that a bright, fluorescent blue light could be seen closing in on their position, and that the strange, unidentified object stopped to hover momentarily around a quarter of a mile away before moving towards the baffled unit once again. The entire time the flying object was said to be completely silent.

As the recon unit struggled to comprehend this bizarre sight that they were seeing, the NVA on the other side of the hill, after presumably gawking at the sight as well, did what humans do and reportedly began firing on the light in full force. The night lit up with tracer rounds blazing skyward towards the strange object floating there and it must have been quite a haunting, mesmerizing sight. For a few moments the object did not react, merely absorbing the assault without showing any sign of distress or damage. Indeed, it seemed to be completely unfazed by the barrage of bullets raging at it. Then, it was claimed that a blindingly bright beam of light lashed forth from the object and the NVA machine gun fire abruptly stopped to send the jungle into a sudden silence so profound that it was jarring, the instant quiet almost deafening in the wake of the cacophony that had exploded through the air just moments before. The light in the sky then reportedly cruised off in complete silence to leave nothing but the droning sounds of the nighttime jungle behind.

The next morning, the recon team decided to make their way to the NVA camp to see what had happened, sensing that they were going to find something weird at the very least and they would not be disappointed. They found the enemy camp to be seemingly abandoned, and strewn about were 12.7MM machine guns and other assorted firearms that looked as if they had been partially melted by a relentless, scorching heat. A closer inspection of the camp turned up what appeared to be piles of ashes and bits of what could have been charred bones scattered about. The leader of the team apparently took pictures of the scene, which he would later include in his report of the spooky incident. Shortly after, he went to rejoin his unit but was told that he had been reassigned to another team. When he asked about what had become of his report and the photos he was allegedly told that no such report existed, and that if he were to continue pressing the matter he could face prison time. Other members of the team were purportedly similarly intimidated with such threats.

Another incident involving the NVA was reported in the State Journal in Lansing, Michigan on Sept. 29, 1972, in a piece entitled What Was UFO Over Hanoi? The report claimed that a huge, luminous orange spherical UFO had appeared at a high altitude above Hanoi on a clear day, and then hovered in a stationary position. North Vietnamese air defenses had then almost immediately fired upon it with three consecutive surface-to-air missiles, but these were either unable to reach it or unable to harm it, although after the missiles were fired it was reported that the UFO diminished somewhat in intensity, becoming “less bright” than it had been before. Nevertheless it reportedly continued to hover over the city for a full one hour and 20 minutes before leaving. In a similar incident reported by the Russian publication Aura-Z, another UFO was supposedly seen over Hanoi and was also fired upon by missiles, which apparently did hit it but had no effect. In this case, the UFO is claimed to have fired a “fine, needle-like, light blue ray” at the defense batteries, completely destroying them and allegedly killing around 200 personnel in the process. This particular, no doubt spectacular report has been suspected of being a hoax, but it is intriguing nonetheless.

Moving on into 1978 we have a truly spectacular case in which an actual alien was not only supposedly shot at, but allegedly killed. The setting for this bizarre tale is Fort Dix and McGuire, located about 18 miles southeast of Trenton, New Jersey, in the United States. It started with personnel at the base spotting UFOs nearby for several weeks, and in the early morning hours of January 18, 1978 an on-duty airman who has only ever been identified by the pseudonym “Sgt, Jeffery Morse,” was purportedly approached by a NJ State Trooper who had quite the story to tell. The trooper explained that an MP on the base had been pursuing one of the UFOs that had been seen on base, and had ended up not only encountering an alien, but shooting and evidently killing it.

According to the this state trooper, the MP had spotted a low-flying unidentified craft and proceeded to chase it for around an hour before his vehicle was suddenly bathed in the bright blue-green light of an oval-shaped UFO hovering directly above him, which caused his engine to stall and cut off all radio communications. As the MP sat there staring in shock and awe, a humanoid creature apparently then crept out from the gloom of night to step directly into the beams of his headlights, which showed that it was about 4 feet tall, with and oversized bald head, large black eyes, slender torso, thin arms and legs, and wet looking grayish skin. The already spooked MP had apparently then completely panicked and lost it, hoisting his .45 automatic sidearm and wildly blasting away at both the creature and the UFO hovering over him until it was empty, hitting the humanoid several times to send it running off into the night as the mysterious craft above shot up into the sky. The bizarre creature had then apparently succumbed to its wounds and fallen to die right there on the grounds of the Air Force Base, and the trooper was on his way to check the report out.

More personnel joined them and when they approached the area where the alien had died they did indeed see it lying there motionless, and without getting too close began roping off the area. It was as they were doing this that a group of what Morse called “blue berets” swooped in and took charge, telling them to leave and not speak of what they had seen. After that it would seemingly be all bushed under the carpet and the body whisked away to who knows where. Morse would apparently tell all of this to UFO researcher Leonard H. Springfield, and explain of the incident:

We found the body of the thing near the runway. It had apparently climbed the fence and died while running. It was all of a sudden hush-hush and no one was allowed near the area. We roped off the area and AFOSI came out and took over. That was the last I saw of it. There was a bad stench coming from it too. Like ammonia smelling but wasn’t constant [in] the air. That day, a team from Wright-Patterson AFB came in a C141 and went to the area. They crated it in a wooden box, sprayed something over it, and then put it into a bigger metal container. They loaded it in the plane and took off. That was it, nothing more said, no report made and we were all told not to have anything to say about it or we would be court-martialed.

Morse and other witnesses were then purportedly repeatedly interrogated and warned to not talk of the matter, forced to sign forms that bound them to secrecy, after which each and every one of them was transferred far away, with Morse sent all the way over to Okinawa, Japan. He would say that after that they had continued their harassment, once detaining him at the airport for no reason when he came to the States to visit his family, and he even passed to Springfield an official looking report that he claimed verified his story. Interestingly, far from this being just the ramblings of this one guy Morse, there was some amount of corroboration, when a retired Air Force Major George Filer III would in later years step forward to claim that the whole story was indeed true, and that he had been there that night as well. Although Flier hadn’t actually seen the corpse himself, it was apparently a big deal on base at the time, with everyone talking about the “alien body” and a whole lot of intense activity and unfamiliar vehicles and aircraft about that was not usual. Unfortunately, there is no way to know if either Morse or Flier were telling the truth or not, and of course the Air Force has flat out denied that anything of the sort ever happened, labelling it all a hoax. We will probably never know how much truth any of it holds, if any, but it is a pretty wild ride at any rate.

Adding to all of this are those air engagements, dogfights in which pilots have allegedly actually shot at UFOs in dogfights, Independence Day style. According to the account, early on the morning of April 11, 1980, 23-year-old Peruvian air force lieutenant Oscar Santa Maria Huerta was conducting exercises in his fighter jet over La Joya Air Force Base, when he was ordered to investigate a strange, silvery object that had appeared in restricted airspace. He soon made visual confirmation with the strange object, which he at first thought was a balloon or spy device that was not supposed to be there, and seemingly did not hesitate to engage with extreme prejudice. He allegedly completely blazed up and opened fire on the object, saying:

I reached the necessary distance and shot a burst of sixty-four 30mm shells, which created a cone-shaped ‘wall of fire’ that would normally obliterate anything in its path. Just one of those shells would wipe out a car, but they had no effect on the object. I thought that the balloon would then be torn open and gases would start pouring out of it. But nothing happened. It seemed as if the huge bullets were absorbed by the balloon, and it wasn’t damaged at all.

The object responded by shooting off at a rapid pace, with Huerta in hot pursuit, headed in the direction of the city of Camana, approximately 84km from the base. At some point the object abruptly stopped in mid flight, to send the fighter pilot in evasive maneuvers to avoid and shoot past it, but he kept at it, positioning himself for another attack run. As he came in once again, the object made a fast climb, evading the fighter. The strange object or craft then proceeded to evade similar efforts to launch an attack, and then Huerta had the idea to attack it instead from above, yet it managed to stay well above him even as they climbed to a dangerous 19,200 meters. He was definitely getting the impression that this was no normal weather balloon or spy drone, and getting closer he could see that it certainly was not, of which he would say:

I was startled to see that the ‘balloon’ was not a balloon at all. It was an object that measured about 10 meters in diameter with a shiny dome on top that was cream-colored, similar to a light bulb cut in half. The bottom was a wider circular base, a silver color, and looked like some kind of metal. It lacked all the typical components of aircraft. It had no wings, propulsion jets, exhausts, windows, antennae, and so forth. It had no visible propulsion system. At that moment, I realized this was not a spying device but a UFO, something totally unknown. I was almost out of fuel, so I couldn’t attack or maneuver my plane, or make a high-speed escape. Suddenly, I was afraid. I thought I might be finished. I was zigzagging to make my plane harder to hit, always with my eyes on the rearview mirrors, hoping it wouldn’t chase me.

Dangerously low on fuel, Huerta managed to land his fighter, and many of the base personnel could witness the object still buzzing about like an angry bee before leaving the area. Huerta would later say, “I find myself in the unique position, at least for the moment, and as far as I know, of being the only military pilot in the world who has actually fired a weapon and struck a UFO. It still gives me chills to think about it.”

Our most recent, and very quite possible the most completely bonkers one of the bunch, is the time a guy apparently attacked and maybe killed an alien being with a samurai sword. In 2009, a resident of a ranch near Phoenix, Arizona by the name of John Edmonds claims that he was under siege by mysterious alien entities that would prowl about his property at night to peek into windows and actually come to him and his wife in the night to assault and perform medical experiments on them, leaving behind needle like holes in their skin, bruises, and causing them to come down with mysterious illnesses. These creatures were described as being basically “Grey Aliens,” the classic description of large bald heads holding those almond shaped eyes and with skinny frames, and he says they relentlessly prowled about his remote property. Edmonds believes they are inter-dimensional in nature, and would say of these strange entities in an interview with Coast to Coast AM:

I have heard and seen critters moving around on our enclosed sun room. The west wall contains four large windows. The speed generated by their movement (3 critters) at once made the glass in the double pane windows actually buzz and misalign in the frames to the point the windows are now very difficult to close and lock properly with out using a screw driver to realign them in the frame first. I believe the high frequency buzz is a side effect of their partial in phase or out of phase inter-dimensional travel. In a safe situation critters transcend cleanly from one dimension to another. In what they perceive as risky circumstances, they only physically materialize to a point of just crossing the dimensional physical threshold. The buzzing occurs at a quantum level as they are partially in both dimensions at the same time. If they are suddenly startled they pull back out of phase into their regular dimension. If they feel safe, then they come completely into this dimension and the buzzing stops. This is the perfect opportunity to physically grab one and then hold on as hard as possible because they will try to “bug out” again immediately.

And grab them he would. These creatures would also kill the man’s dogs and some of his horses, but it appears they had chosen the wrong house to mess with, because according to Edmonds one evening he had had enough, grabbing a Japanese katana-style sword he owned and confronting it to hack away. During the melee, he would allegedly viciously, mortally wound it,

I killed in self defense after repeated home invasions by similar creatures over a period of many years. The assaults by these creatures were responded to in the most violent behavior I could respond with because of weekly and some times daily confrontations during which our home, ranch, horses and dogs were killed. Pierced by the sword with six inches of cold steel perforating the body cavity and seemingly lifeless, the Gray alien still managed to disappear before I could withdraw the weapon and chop off the head. My intention in removing the head was to see if this would prevent it from disappearing. It is my hypothesis the head controls the ability to control the dimensional transference between one place and another. I had hoped to interrupt the process by diminishing the body integrity. I wiped up the blood/Fluid and tissue of the Gray I nearly split in two parts with an exceptionally well sharpened Samurai sword. After hand to hand combat with these little parasites.

The alleged sword and aftermath

He would then collect tissue and blood samples and purportedly send them to a researcer called “W.C. Levengood” for analysis, who would allegedly inform him that they were most certainly not only not human, but unlike anything seen before, even going as far as to say they were the smoking gun for the existence of aliens. Unfortunately for any of us waiting for concrete answers, this Lenengood apparently then just sort of disappeared and took the samples with him. Convenient. That, plus the fact that the alien managed to vanish after being damn near cut in half by a sword, leaves us with no physical evidence outside of photographs and the samples that Edmonds insists totally, for real exist, and this ends up just another wild report with no corroboration. Unsurprisingly, it remains unproven, and we are left to wonder just how much of this completely absurd report is true. It is certainly novel, though, attacking an alien entity with a samurai sword. Whether his insane story is true or not, he deserves points for creativity at the very least.

So what are we dealing with here? Are these genuine stories of humanity doing what we do best and trying to blow stuff up real good, or is this just hoaxes and fabrications? I have no doubt that many people would have such negative, violent reactions to encountering the unknown, but did any of these really happen? There seems to be no way to really know for sure, the physical evidence always flirting with us and staying out of grasp, and while they are certainly spectacular reports, it is probably better to take them with a grain of salt and maybe even hope they are not real, because we would likely not stand a chance in a fair fight with these forces. Make of this all what you will.

True or hoax?

It was midway through 1971 when a brief but intriguing letter was sent to the Pentagon by someone who had some notable things to say about UFOs. He or she was, however, determined to remain anonymous. It was a letter that was also shared with the FBI – by Pentagon staff. If its contents were true, then it told an incredible story. In some ways, we could say that it amounted to a planned, “forced UFO disclosure.” As for the letter itself, you can read it at the FBI’s website, The Vault, (in this particular UFO portion of the site and specifically on page 110). With that said, onto the content of the letter. It begins as follows: “In approximately seven months or January, 1972, certain copies of top-secret documents shall be sent to the New York Times as well as two other newspapers. These documents are related to and will be an ostentation of the involvement of the Pentagon in the controversial ‘Unidentified Flying Objects’ or ‘Flying Saucer’ subject. It will show that not only the US Air Force was involved in UFO research but the other military branches as well.”

The source of the story continued : “Analysis and the actual conclusions of the classic UFO cases shall be revealed. This shall be accomplished by zeroxed [sic] documents and photographs that General Wolfe had reviewed when he was head of the Army’s UFO support program in the Pentagon during the Eisenhower years.” They concluded with these words: “Sorry, but it is concluded here that this is the best course to take because we feel that the secret UFO investigations are parallel in nature to the Times-Pentagon-Vietnam controversy. If we are wrong in taking this action, time will tell.”

Pentagon

As for that “Times-Pentagon-Vietnam controversy,” this is a reference to the so-called “Pentagon Papers.” History.com say of this affair: “The Pentagon Papers was the name given to a top-secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. As the Vietnam War dragged on, with more than 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam by 1968, military analyst Daniel Ellsberg—who had worked on the study—came to oppose the war, and decided that the information contained in the Pentagon Papers should be available to the American public. He photocopied the report and in March 1971 gave the copy to The New York Times, which then published a series of scathing articles based on the report’s most damning secrets.”

Now, let’s take a look at General Wolfe. He was actually General Kenneth Bonner Wolfe. The U.S. Air Force provides detailed information on the general: “Kenneth Bonner Wolfe was born in Denver, Colo., in 1896. He attended high school in Portland, Ore., and San Diego, Calif., and in January 1918 enlisted as a private first class in the Aviation Section of the Signal Reserve Corps. He received ground and flying training at Berkeley, Calif., and Park Field, Tenn., and in July 1918 was commissioned a temporary second lieutenant in the Air Service. He served for a brief period at Park Field as a flying instructor and then moved to Souther Field, Ga., in the same capacity. In January 1919 he returned to Park Field and in March of that year went to Carlstrom Field, Fla. In July 1919 he was made officer in charge of flying at Souther Field, Ga., and the following January was appointed chief engineer officer at the Air Intermediate Depot at Americus, Ga. On July 1, 1920 he received his Regular Army commission as a second lieutenant in the Air Service, and was promoted to first lieutenant that same day.”

The USAF adds: “He began a tour as flying instructor at Brooks Field, Texas, in November 1922, and during this time assumed charge of aero repair at that station in addition to his other duties. In May 1926 he moved to Clark Field, Philippine Islands, as plans and operations officer. He joined the Fifth Air Force on Okinawa in August 1945, as chief of staff and became commanding general two months later. After assuming command of the Fifth, he directed its transition from a mighty assault force to the occupational air arm of Japan and southern Korea, operating from headquarters at Nagoya, Japan. In January 1948 he returned to the United States and was appointed director of procurement and industrial mobilization planning at Air Materiel Command headquarters at Wright Field, Ohio. He was appointed deputy chief of staff for materiel at U.S. Air Force headquarters in September 1949. Rated a command pilot, combat observer and aircraft observer, General Wolfe has more than 7,000 hours flying time. He has been awarded the Distinguished Service Medal with oak leaf cluster and the Order of the British Empire.”

Papers do not reveal what steps the Pentagon and/or the FBI took with regard to this letter and its whistle-blower-type writer. At least one department of the DoD dismissed it out of hand. On the other hand, there’s the matter of timing and relevancy: the source, recall, suggested that revealing the government’s UFO secrets would be “parallel in nature to the Times-Pentagon-Vietnam controversy.” The time-frame was interesting too: Ellsberg provided the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in March 1971. It was only months later that the mysterious letter surfaced. Of course, history has shown that no such mass-release of UFO documentation ever occurred. Was it all just a prank? Was the source speaking truthfully, but prevented at the last moment from disclosing whatever it really was they knew? Almost fifty years later, we will almost certainly never know. But, maybe one day, the bones of the story will be fleshed out – if someone is willing to chase down the story.

{https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }