Secret government UFO file unveiled

By Leonard David

updated 3:15 p.m. ET Nov. 16, 2005

There is one question that persistently circles the community of Unidentified Flying Object true-believers: If the government has nothing to hide, UFO fans often ask, then why is it keeping so many UFO records under lock and key?

“Well, it turns out that the government does have something to hide, but it has nothing to do with extraterrestrials,” said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington, D.C.

A document has surfaced that had been stamped “Top Secret Umbra” — the codeword for the highest, most sensitive category of communications intelligence.

The once-classified affidavit was originally filed by the National Security Agency (NSA) in a 1980 lawsuit to justify the withholding of records on UFOs. The document is largely declassified — with certain sections cut out, ostensibly to protect employee names, and keep NSA technologies, skills, and foreign connections out of the limelight.

The document — In Camera Affidavit of Eugene F. Yeates: Citizens Against UFO Secrecy v. National Security Agency, October 9, 1980 — was released in redacted form on November 3 in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from researcher Michael Ravnitzky and posted on the website of the Federation of American Scientists.

Foreign signals
A read of the document yields insight into how a super-secret agency like the NSA became caught up in the UFO phenomenon.

Created in November 1952, The National Security Agency/Central Security Service is America’s cryptologic organization. It coordinates, directs, and performs highly specialized activities to protect U.S. government information systems and churns out foreign signals intelligence information.

Being a high-tech organization, the NSA is a cutting-edge home for communications and data processing. It is also a center for foreign language analysis and research within the government.

The just-released 1980 document explains that a total of 239 documents related to UFOs were located in NSA files, with 79 of those documents originating with other government agencies. One document is an account by an NSA official attending a UFO symposium. A healthy chunk of these reports were produced between 1958 and 1979.

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