UFO Group Wins Access to CIA Reports On Saucers; Defense Site Visits Told
Los Angeles Times
January 20, 1979
| WASHINGTON (AP)—Strange flying visitors to several defense installations in recent years are reported in nearly 1,000 pages of documents released recently by the Central Intelligence Agency. The documents were obtained under a Freedom of Information suit by the Ground Saucer Watch, an organization based in Phoenix that monitors reports of unidentified flying objects. Further documents and film have been requested. William H. Spaulding of GSW said the documents indicated that UFOs were reported over nuclear installations of the Strategic Air Command in November, 1975, that one visitor described as "a 100-foot-diameter sphere (which) appeared to have craters around the outside." Another base reported it was buzzed by a bright object the size of an automobile at an altitude of 1,000 to 2,000 feet. Spaulding accused the government Wednesday of a coverup, alleging, "We have information to categorically prove the government is lying and that significant findings have been suppressed. We have five ex-intelligence officers who will testify to this coverup." The Washington Post reported Friday that two F-4 Phantom jets scrambled in a 1976 incident over Iran, according to an Air Force report. One Iranian pilot reported his plane's electronic equipment stopped working when the object was approached but resumed working when the planes veered away. The unidentified object was said to |
have been as large as a jetliner. The CIA used U.S. embassies to gather UFO information from other countries and denied that it was gathering such data, Spaulding said. But one document concerns an incident where two Soviet MIG fighters were scrambled to investigate an unidentified object hovering over Cuba. "When the jets came to within five miles of the UFO, it fired at the lead jet, disintegrating it before the eyes of the wing man who returned to base terrified for his life," Spaulding said. The documents disclose sightings of unexplained objects over Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, Loring Air Force Base in Maine and Wurtsmith Air Force Base in Michigan. In reports from those bases and missile launching sites in other states, the UFOs are said to have hovered over nuclear weapons storage areas, sometimes as low as 10 feet above the ground. Some of the reports describe the objects as unidentified helicopters, and the Air Force recorded the incidents as unauthorized helicopter overflights. Spaulding, however, expressed doubts that a helicopter could outrun jet planes. |