Lying practically in the center of Australia, sitting out among the dry and dusty forbidding landscape around 11 miles from the remote desert outpost town of Alice Springs, is the somewhat jarring sight of an installation of squat buildings and satellite dishes ensconced within odd-looking white balls dotting the area, called radomes. Sitting out in this remote, inhospitable land of sun scorched earth as it is, it is easy to conjure up the image that this is a mysterious base on some alien world, but it is in fact a top secret joint American-Australian run military installation officially called the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG), or more commonly just Pine Gap, also known by its unclassified cover name RAINFALL. Although its official function is to track and monitor satellites, the isolated location out in the middle of nowhere and the complete secrecy surrounding it have made sure that this place has attracted plenty of conspiracies and tales of secret experiments, UFOs, and all manner of strangeness.

The base itself began operations in 1970, established by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in conjunction with the Australian government. Originally described as a facility for “space research,” its main purpose, or at least what they tell us, is satellite surveillance, its location and remote moonscape of an area perfect for watching vast expanses of the skies, as well as hiding from any spy ships passing in international waters that might try intercept the signals from its array of spherical tracking systems. Since the Cold War it has also been utilized as a missile detection and tracking station, as well as for intercepting and recording weapons and communications signals from hostile nations such as North Korea. The base employs around 1,000 people, sprawls out over at least 20,000 square meters of floor space, and houses a massive expanse of supercomputers and a spider web of tunnels beneath it all, however, its exact layout and the extent of its subterranean facilities are hidden behind a wall of classified top secrecy. Since it is a secret, reclusive desert base completely off limits to outsiders, patrolled by armed security and surrounded by fences generously festooned with “Keep Out” signs, it is perhaps no surprise that over the years strange tales have gravitated towards Pine Gap, ranging from the weird to the totally outlandish.

Pine Gap

Perhaps the most well-known, publicized, and plausible stories surrounding the facility are that it has been instrumental in coordinating and carrying out lethal drone strikes in warzones such as Afghanistan, rumors which angered many Australians who did not want to be complicit in illegal targeted strikes and objected to having that blood on their hands. The accusations of Pine Gap being used to coordinate these killer drone strikes have been categorically denied by military officials for years, even though declassified NSA documents have shown that similar facilities, such as Menwith Hill Station in the UK, have indeed been used for launching targeted drone strike missions, so these documents heavily suggest that Pine Gap, with its cutting edge technology, is also used for these purposes. There has been some confirmation in that the NSA has admitted to using Pine Gap for intelligence sharing and for missions concerning the war on terror, whatever that may entail.

Similarly nefarious and unethical are claims made by famed whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has said that Pine Gap is heavily used for intercepting communications not only from enemies of the state, but also from private communications over phone, emails and faxes, essentially allowing the military to eavesdrop and spy on anyone in the world at any time, monitoring everyone at all times. Making this more ominous still is that there have been claimed to be at least two areas of the base that are completely off-limits to Australian personnel. Of course both the governments of Australia and the United States dismiss all of these allegations, but still they persist. After all, that the government would be involved with this will probably be not that big a stretch of the imagination for many, yet this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Pine Gap, and other claims start to veer off into the bizarre. Yes, I’m talking about UFOs and aliens.

Pine Gap has for years been ground zero for all sorts of claims of UFO activity in and around the base. It has gained a reputation as a hotspot of UFO sightings, and has even gained the reputation as “Australia’s Area 51,” furthering its cred as a decidedly oddball place. One strange type of report that has popped up frequently is that of all the hidden camouflaged doors in the surrounding area of the base that strange flying craft come and go through. In as early as 1980 there was a report from two police officers that were in the vicinity helping with a search for a missing child, combing through the desert scrub when right in front of them a door opened in the ground to disgorge several bizarre craft described as “flying bathtubs.” These mysterious objects then flew across the base to enter some sort of portal that appeared in the hills not far away, after which it and the craft vanished. A similar report occurred in 1989, when three hunters saw a hidden door open in the hillside they were on, from which emerged a large metallic gray disc. The door then closed to blend perfectly into the environment as if it never existed. This flying object then reportedly silently flew out across the base to hover right above it before shooting straight up in the sky at breathtaking speed.

Other strange UFO activity has been reported from the base as well. Back in 1975 the pilot and passengers of a private plane flying not far from Pine Gap witnessed a huge white light take off from the base and shoot off into the distance at speeds far exceeding a normal aircraft. Interestingly, when they tried to file a report of the sighting they were told in no uncertain terms to forget what they had seen. Perhaps even stranger than this was an incident that supposedly happened in 1984, when a group of five UFO watchers were staking out the area after apparently receiving an anonymous tip that something big was going to go down at the base, and it seems they would not be disappointed. They claim that there was a sudden flurry of activity by personnel at the base, after which a beam of light shot into the sky and formed some sort of cloud-like portal, from which flew five UFOs that flew around the base shooting down green pillars of light at the domed radomes for several minutes before entering the cloud again and vanishing into thin air. There have indeed been numerous other reports of UFOs hovering over the radomes, and these domed radar installations seem to be of particular interest to these mystery craft.

The mention of the portal in this case fits in very well with some of the other off-the-wall conspiracies about the Pine Gap base. It has long been rumored that among the many secret experiments allegedly carried out at the base are those concerned with opening up doorways to other planets and even other dimensions. Other experiments said to happen at the base are those involving time travel, teleportation, reverse engineering alien technology, controlling the weather, and creating super soldiers. You name it, there has probably been a conspiracy claiming that it is an experiment being carried out at Pine Gap. It is hard to know just how many of these rumors are true and how much of it is just conspiracy theory nonsense, but considering that it is such a top secret place that no one can get near, out in the middle of a forsaken wasteland, it is not hard to see why it has managed to attract so much weirdness. What is with this place? We will perhaps never know what really goes on there, but as long as something is going on there the stories will likely continue to swirl, and if you want tales of UFOs, weird experiments, and high strangeness, you can do worse than Pine Gap.

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Over the years (decades, in fact) a number of people have come forward claiming that alien technology, alien bodies, and even live ETs, are secretly held out at Area 51 – and maybe even deep underground the facility itself. The most well-known such figure is Bob Lazar. He scarcely needs an introduction. Also, there is Charles Hall. He claims knowledge of one particular type of alien at Area 51 that have become known as the “Tall Whites.” As their title makes clear, in appearance they are far removed from the dwarfish Greys. According to Hall, back in 1964 he was working at Nellis Air Force Base, a facility inextricably tied to Area 51 and its secret programs of numerous kinds. There is absolutely no doubt at all that Area 51 would not have attained the high degree of mystique and mystery that it has without the input of the aforementioned Bob Lazar. He, more than anyone else, thrust both the base and the name solidly into the public domain. It should be noted, though, there were others who knew something of the tales of aliens at Area 51, and that have added to the claims of Lazar.

One of those people, said George Knapp – a highly-respected, long-time journalist in Las Vegas, Nevada – was a man named Roy Byrum; he provided tax-based services to some of the employees at Area 51 from 1976 to 1979. Several of Byrum’s clients quietly told him what they knew of the alien craft held at Area 51, and of how massive funding for the UFO programs was being siphoned from other government programs, as a means to hide the paper-trail and the money. After sharing this information with journalist George Knapp, Byrum was leaned on by government agents who paid him a less than friendly visit.

Also in the 1970s, several employees of a company called Holmes & Narver Corporation revealed certain data on Area 51’s alien angle, said George Knapp. It’s a company that provides engineering and construction services. One of the sources – and a former employee of Holmes & Narver – was a woman who worked in the Clark County court system and who was ready to speak with journalist George Knapp. That was quickly nixed, though, when the woman’s life was threatened. As was that of her family. Also pre-Lazar, there is the story of Doug Schroeder, an electrical engineer who confided in Las Vegas TV producer Bob Patrick about what he was told was going on at Area 51. Namely, the reverse-engineering of alien craft and extraterrestrial technologies. Although, Schroeder stressed that, in terms of actually flying the craft, not a great deal at all had been achieved. George Knapp noted that in 1991 Schroeder “died in somewhat mysterious circumstances.”

You may buy into the stories of aliens (dead or alive) out at Area 51. Or, you just might suspect the stories could have been concocted by U.S. Intelligence to try and freak the Soviets – during the Cold War – into thinking that we really do have extraterrestrial technology, when we actually don’t. It’s interesting to note that the tales concerning Byrum and Schroeder both dated from the 1970s. That was the very same time-frame when the CIA – and other U.S. agencies, too – were concerned that certain American ufologists were being groomed for secret work by none other than the KGB. Let’s take a closer look at all of this. In the 1990s, 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. Haines’ paper detailed the history of how, and why, the CIA became interested and involved in the phenomenon of UFOs. Although Haines’ study covered a period of more than forty years, I will bring your attention to one particular section of his paper. It’s focused on the 1970s.

Haines wrote that CIA officials “…looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects.”  The Soviets, then, in the 1970s, were camouflaging their secret rocket tests by spreading false and fantastic tales of UFOs. Haines also noted something that is absolutely key to this article: “Agency analysts from the Life Science Division of OSI [Office of Scientific Intelligence] and OSWR [Office of Scientific and Weapons Research] officially devoted a small amount of their time to issues relating to UFOs. These included counterintelligence concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using U.S. citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive U.S. weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft), the vulnerability of the U.S. air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings [italics mine].”

What all of this tells us is that U.S. counterintelligence programs, Russian plots, and certain American Ufologists tied to KGB operations in the 1970s, were swirling around everywhere. Could it be that some (or all) of the 1970s-era stories concerning aliens at Area 51 – that I described above – were carefully seeded by U.S. Intelligence to (a) spread the “aliens at Area 51” scenario; (b) scare the Russians into thinking we have extraterrestrial technology; and (c) maybe, as a result, snare a couple of men from overseas named Ivan and Dimitri? ? Very possibly, yes.

Finally, if you want to learn more about the pre-Lazar accounts and cases that George Knapp secured, get a copy of George’s excellent paper, “Area 51, Bob Lazar, and Disinformation.” You can find it in the MUFON Symposium Proceedings of 1993.

If you’re going to get abducted by space aliens, it’s nice to have a fellow human there to keep you company. It’s even better if the fellow human is a celebrity – maybe you’ll get star treatment too. And if it’s a huge celebrity – at least in your country – well, that’s the tale that a UFO researcher in England has decided to come forward with in a new book. The celebrity? Robbie Williams, the British pop star who himself has talked about his interest in UFOs and has had at least one encounter that he swears happened when he was clean and sober. Does he remember being abducted with Russ Kellett?

“I went through a tunnel and ended up in a room with tall, bald aliens. They had the looks of a human but were 10ft tall – that’s not the norm, is it? There were some smaller ones and they all looked the same.”

Kellett recently told Yorkshire Live about an abduction experience he had in 1999 – an experience he finally feels comfortable about revealing in interviews prior to the release of his book, “Through the Eye of an Alien.” Kellett claims he was riding his motorcycle near Druid’s Altar in Bingley, West Yorkshire, at about 10 pm when he entered a tunnel … and came out on a spaceship. He claims he remembered being in a chair, having a tube down his throat and getting some sort of injection in his neck. Then it gets worse.

“A helmet went over my head. That’s what I remember. Later on, I started remembering stuff.”

What he remembered happening next is being given weapons and sent out on some sort of military mission. Just as he started to panic, he claims he saw Robbie Williams behind him, also in uniform.

“I am in a military unit – on a mission. He (Williams) is behind me. We had helmets on. I was ready to go on a mission. I looked at him. He must have been ‘leader one’. I said ‘don’t I know you from somewhere?’ Robbie Will….?’. An alien then shouted ‘get back in line’. You do not mess with these dudes. This is serious stuff, it is not a joke. It is called abduction.”

Robbie Williams looking alien in wax

It’s also called ‘unbelievable’, as Kellett says he found out when attempting to retell his encounter at UFO conferences. That seems surprising since Kellett is known as “The UFO Guru and ET Motorcycle Rider” in the UK and has appeared on a number of paranormal shows. It’s also surprising that a publicity hound like Robbie Williams, especially one with a professed interest in UFOs, hasn’t told the story himself – unless he doesn’t remember it, is an alien himself or it didn’t happen. Williams claims he had a UFO hover over him while lounging outside at the swanky Beverly Hills Hotel in 2008. That one was 300 feet above him, but in 2018 he claimed to have seen another UFO that “if I got a tennis ball out I could have hit it with a tennis ball.”

Yorkshire Live doesn’t give any more information on Kellett’s abduction and alien/Robbie Williams encounter, so it looks like we’ll have to wait for his book to be finished and released. Or for Robbie to decide he wants some of that attention himself and comes forward with his own account. Either way, it’s a strange tale of abduction with a celebrity twist.

If abducted yourself, who would you want to see on the alien spaceship?

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At some point, Frances was staring out the window into the murk beyond and noticed that there seemed to be a light out over the bush that was keeping pace with them. She told her husband and he saw it too, although what it was they could not determine. It was definitely not another car, and this became more apparent as it closed the distance and continued following them. As they wondered what the strange object could be, the car headlights suddenly began to fade, their light withering to leave the road ahead gloomy and illuminated solely by that mysterious light. The radio still worked, as did the interior lights, yet the headlights would not come back on, leaving the road ahead very indistinct. The couple then realized that it was absolutely freezing in the car, their breath casting plumes of mist in the cold, and as Peter tinkered with the headlight switch some more he was shocked to suddenly become aware that they were careening through the murky night at a speed of over 90 miles an hour.

Peter then pumped the brakes, but nothing happened, and the steering wheel also would not respond. It was as if the car was no longer under his control, which was quite frightening considering the dangerous speeds they were barreling along on a winding road without headlights. As all this was happening, that anomalous light continued to tail them with inscrutable intent. It was only as they approached the town of Port Victoria that Peter regained control of the car, and the frightened couple pulled into a service station. They noted that it was now 4:30 AM in the morning, filled their car with gas, and continued their journey into the weird.

As they drove along this road on a route they had taken many times before, they noticed that something wasn’t quite right. The road from Fort Victoria to Beit Bridge was normally quite curved and winding, but they noticed that not only was it now completely straight, but the landscape itself seemed to have changed. Rather than the usual scrubland there was in its place an expanse of high grasses and swampland that was completely unfamiliar to them. It was all odd enough that at first they thought they must be lost, but then they noticed that they were approaching the South African border and that the landscape had one again become what they were used to. Even odder than this was that although the whole episode had seemed to take less than half an hour, nearly 2 hours had passed, with neither of them having any recollection of this missing time. Even weirder still was that the instrument panel told them that they still had a full tank of gas, and when they finally got to the border they were surprised to find that their car had four brand new tires on it. How had this happened?

In an effort to find answers, Peter would undergo hypnotic regression to try and unearth any buried memories of that missing time. It would turn out to be even weirder than he had expected. According to him, during the missing time a humanoid entity very similar to the one he had fleetingly seen on the side of the road had suddenly materialized in the back seat of their car, after which a beam of light had washed over them and the entire vehicle began to rise into the air. They would apparently fly up into a large UFO, and Peter was subsequently ushered off to what he called a “sickbay,” where he saw his wife and several other people in some sort of suspended animation. The aliens then gave him a medical examination and brought him to a hangar, where he saw his car parked between two flying saucers, with the hood up and four aliens tuning up the engine and fitting it with new tires. That was pretty nice of them! It would turn out that Peter’s wife would never be able to remember what had happened to her or why she had been in that frozen, dazed state aboard that ship.

This completely outlandish story was originally published in John Spencer’s book “World Atlas of UFOs,” and it is hard to know what to think of it all. There is very little that can be found to corroborate this oddball tale and much of it is so weird and orbited with questions that it is difficult to know where to even start. Why did they lose control of their car on that lonely road? What was that light that was following them? Even more pressing is what was that strange landscape they were in and why was the normally twisting road straight at that time? Why would these aliens want to abduct them, and more importantly why did they tune the car up, give it new tires, and presumably an oil change while they were at it? Who knows? Whatever you may think of this strange series of events, it is all certainly odd, and one can do worse than to find mysterious alien abductors willing to carry out auto maintenance and new tires.

It was around 11:00 p.m. on September 26, 1994, when a small, twin-tailed aircraft crash-landed onto the lengthy runway at Boscombe Down; it is situated in the English county of Wiltshire and only 6.2 miles from none other than Stonehenge. At around the time of the incident, a number of aviation enthusiasts were listening in on air-band radios and were aware that something untoward had taken place. The following day, several of those same enthusiasts drove to the installation – which is near to the A303 road and not at all far from the famous Stonehenge – and were apprehended by local police who had set up road-blocks to keep away prying eyes. Before being ushered away, however, a number of people succeeded in catching sight of a disabled aircraft. It was situated at the end of the runway and, aside from its twin-tail fins, was completely covered over by tarpaulins. Air Force Monthly magazine was soon on the trail of the truth. In the November 1994 issue of the magazine, investigative writers noted that in the wake of the crash both a Boeing 757 and a C-5 Galaxy arrived at Boscombe Down. The story continued that the secret plane was loaded aboard the Galaxy and flown to “Air Force plant 42 at Palmdale, California.” Air Force Monthly suggested that the aircraft “…was a TR-3A, the existence of which the U.S. Government has yet to officially acknowledge.” The subsonic, stealth TR-3A – also referred to as the Black Manta – remains an enigma, since its existence has never been officially confirmed. Now, let’s take a look at the connection between Stonehenge and the Men in Black.

Only hours after briefly seeing a cigar-shaped UFO hovering near Stonehenge, Wiltshire, England on December 25, 1985, Sandra Green – who was driving home, in the early hours, after a late night Christmas Eve party in the English city of Bath – had a bizarre dream. In it, three Men in Black warned Sandra to keep her nose out of UFOs. They were – as they usually are – cadaverous “slightly dead”-looking MIB. As for the warning, it was one of those “or else”-type threats that the MIB are so skilled at making. The dream was so graphic it led Sandra to believe that the MIB had the ability to literally get inside her dreams, manipulate those very same dreams, and issue a bone-chilling warning – one which she has still not forgotten. Sandra shared the story with me on the evening of September 9, 2014 – the facts of the affair still firmly fixed in her mind and her memory after close to thirty years. And, I have to say, it wasn’t just the facts that were fixed in Sandra’s mind: it was cold fear, too. Even across a transatlantic telephone call I could sense that all was not well. I messaged Sandra a few days later, in an effort to clarify a couple of things she mentioned to me. She did not reply. She still hasn’t. A sign of something? I hoped not.

Nick Redfern at legendary Stonehenge

Just twenty-four miles from Stonehenge is another enticing location filled with ancient, standing stones: the village of Avebury. It was at Avebury, one night in the early 1960s, that something very weird happened – and, for the person, terrifying. The witness to this particularly weird case was a middle-aged lady who had lived in the small village of Avebury, England all of her adult life and who was fascinated by archaeological history. She would often stroll among Avebury’s famous stones at night, marveling at their creation and musing upon their history. It was on the night in question that she had been out walking at around 10:30 p.m. when she was both startled and amazed to see a small ball of light, perhaps two-feet in diameter, gliding slowly through the stones – a definitive UFO. Transfixed and rooted to the spot, she watched as it closed in on her at a height of about twelve feet. The ball then stopped fifteen feet or so from her, and small amounts of what looked like liquid metal slowly and silently dripped from it to the ground. Then, in an instant, the ball exploded in a bright, white flash. For a moment she was blinded by its intensity and instinctively fell to her knees. When her eyes cleared, however, she was faced with a horrific sight. The ball of light had gone, but on the ground in front of her was what she could only describe as a monstrous, writhing worm. The woman did not wait to see what might have happened next.

One of the mystery-filled stones of Avebury, Wiltshire, England

(Nick Redfern)

Now, let’s leave the Earth behind and head off to Mars, so to speak. September 24, 2015, was the date when the United Kingdom’s Express newspaper splashed a feature titled: “Has Stonehenge been found on Mars? Ancient ‘alien’ stone circle discovered on Red Planet.” It’s hardly surprising the story caught the attention of many people. “Mr. Enigma,” the person who revealed the mystery at his YouTube channel, said that what could be seen in one of NASA’s very own photos was “…a perfectly circular platform with a strange cluster of stones emerging from it.” He added: “I know the formation is not an exact match, nor am I saying it is, indeed, a Stonehenge set up. I am just saying there is something strange about this area and it looks very much like the mysterious ancient stone circle of Stonehenge. Could the builders of Stonehenge have visited Mars and did they build the same thing there? Or did we have visitors who taught us how to build these things and do the same for long-lost beings on Mars as well? Or is this just another face on Mars illusion?”

The stone circle (pictured) was spotted on an apparently raised hummock in images of the Martian surface captured by the HiRise camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter

It was in the late-1970s when the FBI released into the public domain its UFO files. And, it was thanks to the provisions of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Around 1,700 pages of documentation were made freely available. Today, all of those documents (and, now, more) can be accessed at the Bureau’s website, The Vault. Here’s the specific link. Contained within those files is one document that has largely been ignored or overlooked. Maybe, even, forgotten. It’s important, though, and dates from the latter part of 1957. Its title: “Reports of Flying Disks Foreign Miscellaneous.” It was prepared by a Legal Attaché at Havana, Cuba. And, almost inevitably, it wasn’t long before the story reached the media of Cuba. The FBI recorded the following: “The Havana daily newspaper ‘Diario de la Marina,’ November 12, 1957, carried a dispatch datelined November 11, 1957, at Pinar del Rio, Cuba, reporting that two witnesses who had just arrived in that town from the Matahambre Mines in Pinar del Rio Province, claimed that they had seen a flying disc in the shape of a man’s hat hovering over the general area of Matahmbre for several minutes. They claimed that this disc was larger than ordinary airplanes normally seen in that area and that it was completely silent in its flight. They said that it disappeared at a very high speed toward the sea. There was no further descriptive information furnished in this newspaper article. It is noted that Matahambre is located 90 miles west of Havana.”

Of course, as anyone with a knowledge of the UFO phenomenon will know, Flying Saucers were all over the place in the 1950s. This case is slightly different, however. A copy of the document was forwarded onto none other than the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). As for the reason, it was because some CIA analysts were concerned that what had been seen was not a UFO but a U-2 spy-plane of the CIA, whose pilot was taking photos of Cuba. It was in 1955 – specifically in July of that year – that the legendary U-2 spy-plane flew at the Nevada Test and Training Range at Area 51’s huge runway at Groom Lake, thus cementing the range’s undeniable role in aviation history.

Richard M. Bissell, Jr., was a Central Intelligence Agency officer who, from 1961 to 1962, held down the job of the first co-director of the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which operates much of the United States’ satellite-based surveillance technology. Back in the early 1950s, and before his NRO career began in earnest, Bissell astutely realized that there was a deeply pressing need to keep careful watch on what the Soviets were doing, specifically in terms of constructing new military bases, atomic facilities, and aircraft that might pose distinct, serious threats to the security of the United States. So, a top secret plan was initiated to develop a fleet of aircraft – reconnaissance planes designed to fly very fast and extremely high – that could secretly spy on the Soviets, by penetrating their airspace and securing high-resolution photography of whatever it was that the Reds were up to. The aircraft was the aforementioned Lockheed U-2 and the operation was code-named Project Aquatone.

So, what does this have to do with UFOs? Well, let’s see. We have to turn our attention to a CIA paper written by Gerald Haines and titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” When, in 1997, Haines’ report became public, the media took a great deal of interest in its contents. For example, the U.K.’s Independent newspaper ran an article with the title of “US hid spy plane projects behind UFO hysteria.” In part, it stated: “Mr Haines, a historian at the National Reconnaissance Office, based his article on a review of CIA documents from the late 1940s to 1990. He described how the air force sought to deflect attention from development of its high-altitude experimental aircraft, the U-2 and SR-71. 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.'”

SR-71

Not only did the report state that 96 per cent  of UFO sightings had been solved; it also stated that a significant number of incidents could be applied to sightings of spy-planes, such as the U-2. When the report was released, some Ufologists scoffed. It has to be said, though, we know for sure that the CIA was informed of the UFO sighting over Cuba in 1957. Not only that: in the Project Aquatone files there is a brief reference to the newspaper story I mentioned in the first paragraph of this article. That would suggest the CIA really did, at times, use the UFO subject as a means to camouflage the activities of its high-flying spy-planes.

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