Weird news: CIA On UFOs: 'It Was Us'

Wednesday, 31 December 2014

CIA On UFOs: 'It Was Us'

If you had trouble identifying certain flying objects in the skies in the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA has an answer for you. Although it's not the answer ET believers might hope for.

#1 most read on our #Bestof2014 list: Reports of unusual activity in the skies in the '50s? It was us.

http://t.co/BKr81M5OUN (PDF 9.26MB)
— CIA (@CIA) December 29, 2014

"Reports of unusual activity in the skies in the '50s? It was us," the CIA tweeted from its official Twitter account Monday.

By way of explanation, the intelligence agency linked to a lengthy 1998 report on U-2 spy plane activities from the 1950s and 1960s.

HuffPost's Lee Spiegel wrote about the U-2 project's links to Area 51 when the document was declassified in 2013.

The history, which is redacted in parts, mainly discusses the plane's development, test flights, and reconnaissance missions. An analysis of the report by British U-2 historian Chris Pocock is available at George Washington University's National Security Archive.

The 272-page document also notes the increase in reports of UFOs that coincided with the spy plane's testing:

High-altitude testing of the U-2 soon led to an unexpected side effect -- a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). In the mid-1950s, most commercial airliners flew at altitudes between 10,000 and 20,000 feet ... Consequently, once U-2s started flying at altitudes above 60,000 feet, air-traffic controllers began receiving increasing numbers of UFO reports.

According to the report, U-2 flights "accounted for more than one-half of all UFO reports during the late 1950s and most of the 1960s."

Commercial airline pilots flying east to west reported the planes as "fiery objects" in the sky shortly after sundown, but report says the glow was due to the spy planes catching the sun's rays in a darkening sky. Other reports were made by ground-based witnesses in broad daylight, who thought it was unusual to see an object flying more than 60,000 feet high.

Unfortunately, the report neither confirms nor denies that your Uncle Dale has an implant.