Every UFO document the CIA has is now available for public download, and it’s pretty crazy. The news comes after it was announced that the United States Government has (now less than) 180 days to provide the public with all of its information onUFOs. The COVID-19 omnibus bill is responsible for the huge dump of UFO documents and the CIA is getting a head start by providing what they claim is “everything” they have, which is upwards of 700 documents dating back to the 1970s.
The Black Vault, “a clearinghouse for declassified documents,” is providing the world with theCIA’s UFO documents. All of the documents are available for free download and are in PDF format. However, not all of them are very easy to decipher, which many believe was by design. While the CIA gave up “all” of their intel about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP), they did not make it easy on the Black Vault, according to the site’s founder, John Greenewald Jr. He had this to say.
“Around 20 years ago, I had fought for years to get additionalUFO recordsreleased from the CIA. It was like pulling teeth! I went around and around with them to try and do so, finally achieving it. I received a large box, of a couple thousand pages, and I had to scan them in one page at a time.”
John Greenewald Jr. had to scan in each UFO document by hand from a CD-ROM provided by the CIA. As to why the CIA is still using CD-ROM technology, that is unclear. If that wasn’t enough, some of the documents were in another outdated format. Greenewald Jr. says, “Researchers and curious minds alike prefer simplicity and accessibility when they look at data dumps such as these,” but the CIA decided to make it a challenge. you may read what Greenewald Jr. had to say about his task below.
“The CIA has made it INCREDIBLY difficult to use their records in a reasonable manner. They offer a format that is very outdated (multi page .tif) and offer text file outputs, largely unusable, that I think they intend to have people use as a ‘search’ tool. In my opinion, this outdated format makes it very difficult for people to see the documents, and use them, for any research purpose.”
While the CIA UFO documents are welcome, this is only the beginning. A lot of the documents still contain classified information, which will hopefully be lifted when the 180 days is up from theCOVID-19 omnibus bill. In one of the documents that has gained a lot of attention, the Assistant Deputy Director for Science & Technology (A/DDS&T) was shown “something related to a UFO that was hand carried to him,” in the 1970s. He then decided that he would personally look into the matter, but the rest of the report is classified.
There has been a lot of news in the world of UFOs in the past year. The Defense Department finallydeclassified a few UFO videosthat Tom DeLonge’s To the Stars Academy previously leaked. In addition, there has been an uptick in sightings, including one in Oahu right before New Year’s Eve. As of this writing, the CIA has not publicly discussed their latest document dump or what the future of UFO reports holds. The interview with John Greenewald Jr. was originally conducted byVice.
