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- Not only has the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency admitted
its role in trying to "correct" public opinion about UFOs over
the last half century, it now believes the policy caused "major problems"
in dealing with the public.
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- In an internal report entitled "CIA's Role in the
Study of UFOs, 1947-90," agency historian Gerald K. Haines portrayed
the CIA as consistently and deliberately working to suppress reports of
unidentified aerial phenomena since modern UFO sightings began with the
Kenneth Arnold case of 1947.
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- Still, even in a paper filled with covert attempts on
the part of both the CIA and the Air Force to "persuade the public
that UFOs were not extraordinary," Haines himself continued the suppressive
policy, perhaps unconsciously, by writing that the CIA "paid only
limited and peripheral attention to the phenomena" since the early
1950s.
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- This tension in the report, written at the request of
CIA Director R. James Woolsey in 1997, is a telling reflection of the government
agency's troubled broader relationship with UFO sightings and literature.
Haines' history is studded with depictions of the CIA not only repressing
UFO reports and reviewing recommendations that agents monitor UFO clubs
for subversive activities, but also trying to hide its own interest in
the matter.
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- Indeed, the struggle to "carefully restrict"
and "forbid" any public awareness of CIA involvement in UFO investigations
eclipses the actual investigations as the major thrust of the agency's
UFO efforts. Even though the agency had accepted the Air Force's conclusion
that there was only "a remote possibility" that UFOs were interplanetary
aircraft as early as 1952, investigations of the "massive buildup
of sightings" went on, just in case.
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- Concealment of CIA interest
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- However, after 1953, when negative findings from a civilian
panel motivated the CIA to "put the entire issue of UFOs on the back
burner" entirely, Haines said the agency became almost exclusively
concerned with covering up its own involvement in the world of unidentified
flying objects.
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- This aggressive policy of public non-involvement was
important to the CIA for many reasons. First, a number of agency officials
and study groups over the years urged the CIA to "conceal its interest"
because such attention would seem to officially sanction to the existence
of UFOs. Although the agency itself, like the Air Force, believed the chance
of flying saucers posing a direct threat was minimal, the fear that even
unfounded public belief in the phenomenon, if encouraged by government
interest, could be enough to "touch off mass hysteria and panic."
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- Particularly in the 1950s, the Cold War heightened this
somewhat obsessive concern with hiding any evidence of the CIA's involvement,
said Haines. Although the agency's UFO study group did not see any security
threat emerging directly out of flying saucers themselves, even if they
actually existed, the CIA was deeply worried by the possibility that Soviet
agents could use UFOs as "a possible psychological warfare tool"
or cloak a more Earthly attack with fake UFO reports.
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- Tantalizingly, Haines also noted that at least one CIA
Director, Walter Bedell Smith, "wanted to know what use could be made
of the UFO phenomenon in connection with US psychological warfare efforts."
The report does not mention whether the agency followed up on this opportunity
to manipulate UFO reports in a more sophisticated manner for its own purposes.
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- As the 1950s wore on, the CIA became even less interested
in UFOs in themselves and more concerned with covering up its own early
involvement with the phenomenon. In 1955, only the possibility that the
Soviets would eventually develop a flying saucer of their own kept the
investigations from ending completely.
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- Meanwhile, ironically, the CIA had built its own "unidentified
flying object," the U-2 surveillance aircraft, and sightings of these
planes needed to be kept out of the media. According to Haines, Air Force
investigators were "careful not to reveal the true cause" of
U-2 sightings. However, having no other means of explaining the encounters,
it is likely the field agents were forced either to lie or retreat into
a suspicious silence.
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- The return of the repressed
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- Haines argues that this suspicious silence was not a
good strategy for the agency, but the established need for secrecy left
the CIA with little choice while fervor over the government's role in "covering
up" UFO information grew. Even though the agency itself "had
a declining interest in UFO cases" by the late 1950s, it was still
spending considerable resources looking out for "the more sensational
UFO reports and flaps" in order to suppress them.
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- Ultimately, this policy backfired by highlighting the
CIA's role in investigation -- or the ominous cover-up thereof -- only
to "add fuel to the growing mystery surrounding UFOs." UFO researchers
blamed the agency for starting the UFO flap of the 1950s for psychological
warfare purposes, and the idea proved so persuasive that even CIA Director
Stansfield Turner asked his staff whether the agency was "in UFOs"
after reading a 1979 New York Times article.
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- At the end, Haines concluded, the tactics of silence
and repression were a failure. "The UFO issue probably will not go
away soon, no matter what the agency does or says. The belief that we are
not alone in the universe is too emotionally appealing and the distrust
of our government is too pervasive to make the issue amenable to traditional
scientific studies of rational explanation and evidence."
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- Indeed, much of that "distrust" was the CIA's
own doing, and the benefits appear to have been limited. Despite the agency's
best efforts to keep UFO reports out of the media, according to Haines,
"an extraordinary 95 percent of all Americans have at least heard
or read something about UFOs, and 57 percent believe they are real."
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