Study: UFO sightings were U.S. spy planes

August 3, 1997
Web posted at: 10:34 a.m. EDT (1434 GMT) 
WASHINGTON (AP) -- With growing hysteria over alleged UFO sightings in 
the 1950s, the Air Force repeatedly concocted false cover stories to 
hide the fact that their super-secret spy planes had been spotted, an 
intelligence study says. 

Historian Gerald K. Haines writes that the Air Force, responding to 
alleged UFO sightings during the Cold War years, frequently provided 
explanations that were untrue to deflect attention away from the spy 
planes. 

"Over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were 
accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the 
United States," Haines wrote in the spring issue of Studies of 
Intelligence, an unclassified CIA journal. 

The article was found Saturday on the Internet. 

Concern about the public finding out about the secret spy planes "led 
the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public 
in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily 
sensitive national security project," Haines wrote. 

"While perhaps justified, this deception added fuel to the later 
conspiracy theories and the cover-up controversy" regarding the 
existence of UFOs, he added. 

Haines, a historian at the National Reconnaissance Office, based his 
article on a review of CIA documents from the late 1940s to 1990. 

He described how the Air Force sought to deflect attention from the 
development of its high-altitude experimental aircraft, the U-2 and the 
SR-71. 

The early U-2s were silver and reflected the sun's rays, especially at 
sunrise and sunset, and often appeared as fiery objects to people below, 
Haines said. The U-2s were later painted black. 

Air Force investigators "aware of the secret U-2 flights tried to 
explain away such sightings by linking them to natural phenomena such as 
ice crystals and temperature inversions," Haines wrote. 

By 1956, the Air Force internally had clear explanations for 96 percent 
of all UFO sightings, Haines wrote, referring to the experimental 
aircraft. "They were careful, however, not to reveal the true cause of 
the sighting to the public." 

He also said the CIA, during the height of the Cold War, hid its 
involvement in studies into UFO sightings because the agency was 
concerned if word came out it would lead to a national hysteria that 
could be exploited by the Soviet Union. 

The director of space policy at the Washington-based Federation of 
American Scientists, John E. Pike, said the study raises questions about 
other possible government cover-ups involving unidentified flying 
objects. 

"The flying-saucer community is definitely onto something" in accusing 
the military of hiding something, Pike told The New York Times, which 
reported on the study in Sunday's edition. 

Haines' study, "CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90," is available 
on the Internet at http://www.odci.gov/csi/studies/97unclas/ufo.html. 

Copyright 1997 ÊThe Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material 
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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