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They are mysterious stories that have captured the imaginations of UFO believers and sparked

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covert government investigations.

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It was a gigantic object 300 meters in diameter.

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It made very strange aerial maneuvers.

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These are not celebrated American paranormal incidents.

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These UFO episodes took place in a country for years, shrouded in secrecy.

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Behind the scenes, the Russian government, the Russian military take this phenomena very seriously.

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They've been lying directly to their own people.

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May 2002, in a remote area 100 miles outside of Moscow, an investigative team from CosmoBoysk,

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a group that studies UFO sightings searches for signs of UFO activity.

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We are going to enter the forest.

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This is the place pointed out by local people to be the destination of different types of UFOs.

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Soviet ufologists have been active since the 1960s.

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They claim that for decades thousands of citizens have witnessed the appearance of

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unexplainable objects in the skies over Mother Russia.

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Today, ufologists in Russia work in the open and report their findings freely.

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This was not always the case.

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Before the policy of Glasnost was introduced in 1985, independent investigations of UFOs

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in the former Soviet Union were conducted in a climate of secrecy and fear.

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At times, official government policy denied the existence of UFOs and any UFO activity

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and prohibited anyone from reporting otherwise.

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The UFO research in the former Soviet Union was a very complicated matter because one had to deal

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with overall state secrecy.

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Meanwhile, the Soviet government was involved in covert UFO investigations of its own.

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We know that the Russian government studied this secretly for a period of 40 years.

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We know that they took it very seriously.

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We also know that there have been various attempts, including more recent ones,

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to put a spin on this to say, ah, there's nothing to it.

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That's a bunch of baloney.

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The results of the Soviet's most far-reaching secret UFO study became public in the year 2000.

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The inquiry started in 1978 and took 13 years to complete.

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The investigative team consisted of top scientists and military experts

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and was completely clandestine.

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Certainly, this collaboration between the Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Defense was not

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paraded. I mean, formally, these studies were closed.

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Classified organizations took part in these studies.

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This research should have a secret character.

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Colonel Boris Sokolov was the coordinator of the investigation.

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Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, he met with American investigative journalist George Knapp.

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Sokolov told us that just as in America, 90 to 95 percent of these cases could be explained away.

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But the remaining 5 to 10 percent could not be easily explained.

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The 13-year Soviet UFO study scrutinized some of the most puzzling sightings in Russian history.

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In 1968, a cameraman documenting a test of a Soviet jet fighter noticed a huge triangular

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object in the sky. He focused his camera on the object and caught it on film.

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In 1977, an unusual aerial display sent tentacles of light streaming down over the town of Petrozovsk.

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Some claim the event caused fine holes to be glazed in glass windows and concrete.

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In 1982, military personnel at an intercontinental ballistic missile base

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witnessed several brilliantly lit orbs overhead.

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Seconds later, a warning light indicated a missile had switched to the prepare to launch mode.

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Had an alleged UFO come close to starting a nuclear attack?

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UFO sightings over Russia are not limited to the recent past.

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Reports of peculiar looking airborne objects date back centuries.

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However, no formal investigations were undertaken until the early 20th century

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when an event of epic proportions demanded analysis.

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Tunguska, July 30, 1908. In a remote area of Siberia, the morning calm was rocked by an explosion.

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The powerful blast was heard a thousand miles away.

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There was an enormous firewall blast, something on the order of 15 megatons of equivalent energy,

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which is roughly a thousand times that of the Hiroshima blast at the end of the Second World War.

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This was an extraordinary event.

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Because of the remoteness of the Tunguska region, it was almost 20 years before any

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government researchers visited the site. The first expedition to reach Tunguska was headed

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by Russian mineralogist Leonid Kulik.

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When the initial expedition got to the Tunguska area in 1927, the natives were reluctant to

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show the scientists into the region because they thought the god Agdi had devastated the area

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because of the wickedness that was going on and he had destroyed the trees, killed the animals.

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Kulik eventually convinced locals to direct him to the blast location.

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Believing a meteorite had caused the massive explosion, Kulik assumed he would find a crater

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at the point of the meteorite's impact. To his surprise, there was none.

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He looked for meteorite samples on the ground because often when an object hits the earth,

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it throws up debris and the debris is recoverable around the edges of the crater.

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But of course he didn't find that either.

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What Kulik discovered has stirred UFO debate for decades.

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At the blast's epicenter was a frozen swamp with an untouched clump of fully grown trees in the

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middle. Circled around the grove, 10 million dead trees lay in a symmetrical ring, seemingly

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mowed down by a cosmic scythe. So here we have an enormous blast site with no crater, no fragments

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or meteorites around the rim of the crater and this radio pattern of burnt trees knocked

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down for some 20 miles in all directions. In the years that followed, others traveled to

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Tunguska to study the unusual occurrence. There might have been fruits obtained by

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labors of another expedition sent by the head of the Soviet secret police in the late 1940s.

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But all we know is that such expedition existed. We do not know what has happened to the items

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and information it collected. Further baffling ufologists were reports of radiation damage in

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the Tunguska blast region. There were also some reports of mutations taking place in plant life

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and even some humans apparently suffered some gene damage. In 1947, Russian Army Colonel Alexander

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Kazensev developed a remarkable theory based on information about the devastating consequences

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of America's atomic bomb attacks on Japan. He was listening to the report about the nuclear

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bombardment. The announcer gave a very long and very detailed description of how and in

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which direction trees, houses had fallen and so on, how everything was hit. He realized

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that what had happened in Hiroshima exactly the same happened at Tunguska only nearly

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half a century ago. Kazensev hypothesized that the nuclear-like devastation seen at Tunguska must

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have been caused by the crash of a nuclear-powered alien spacecraft. But the scientific community

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rebuffs the UFO theory. Scientists claim the Tunguska explosion was caused by a rare but

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explainable natural event. They believe an asteroid dropped to just three miles above the earth's surface and then exploded.

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As the object came in it was being decelerated and squeezed by atmospheric forces. It blew up with a force of a hydrogen bomb.

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The shock wave smashed down the forest knocking trees away from the blast.

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And resulting in a pattern away from ground zero. But how would an asteroid explosion explain the reports of radiation

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damage in the Tunguska area? Scientists say it can be attributed to the sheer magnitude of the explosion.

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As we mentioned before that the blast itself was a thousand times greater than the Hiroshima blast at the end of World War II.

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The blast would have generated a series of very high-speed, very high-speed, very high-speed.

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A series of very high-speed charged particles would have been the cause of some of the mutations in the gene structures of plants and animals.

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But to this day scientific explanations do not satisfy many ufologists.

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I have been several times to the place where the Tunguska body fell. I intentionally call it body, not meteorite.

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In the catastrophe of an asteroid, of a comet or of any other natural body cannot lead to such consequences.

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A number of expeditions found things that they couldn't explain.

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There are some people who were saying that the evidence suggested this was some kind of alien spaceship.

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That was the kind of magical explanation you use when you don't have enough surreal science to understand the physics and the astronomy involved.

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Throughout the rest of the 20th century, magical explanations of unidentified flying objects over Russian skies would continue.

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And in one instance would help expose a top-secret Soviet military project.

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It was 1948. World War II was over, but the Cold War was just beginning.

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Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had initiated the Berlin blockade and directed his scientists to develop a nuclear weapon to rival that of the United States.

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It was during this period that some claimed Stalin grew concerned about UFOs.

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It has said his interest stemmed from reports of a 1947 UFO incident in Roswell, New Mexico.

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In 1947, it would have been a hotbed of Soviet espionage because we had all kinds of stuff there.

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The 509th bomber wing, the only atomic bomber wing group.

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Proportedly, Stalin ordered Sergei Karolov, the founder of the Russian space program, to analyze information about the supposed Roswell crash and report his findings.

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Mr. Karolov came up with an answer.

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Yes, UFOs exist. No, they present no immediate threat.

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And after evaluating the information, all that the Russians had acquired on Roswell and on UFOs, Karolov concluded,

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UFOs are real, they appear to be intelligently controlled.

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That's what he told Stalin, and Stalin in turn said, that's what my other people have concluded as well.

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While concrete proof of the conversation does not exist, several Soviet scientific agencies did begin investigating UFOs in the ensuing years.

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Stalin, after getting this information about Roswell and UFOs in general, did the same thing basically that the American government had been doing.

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He condemns UFOs in public and then conducts secret tests behind the scenes.

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He had all sorts of high level scientists who would research the problem for him and then report to military officials all behind the scenes.

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Also hidden from public view were UFO reports culled from Soviet Air Force pilots.

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Between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, pilots reported approximately 15,000 UFO sightings.

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It is very difficult to find a pilot who has been flying for many years and has never seen a UFO.

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Most of these sightings can be easily explained.

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In an era of super-powered distrust, flights of American spy planes and spy balloons were common over Soviet skies.

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But investigative journalist George Knapp, who has viewed portions of the Soviet UFO files, found some of the pilot sightings perplexing.

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There were 40 instances where Russian war planes were sent after UFOs.

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This is not temperature inversion, this is not a weather balloon, this is not swamp gas, these are craft.

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Floating around in the airspace of Russia and they sent war planes to go chase them.

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While pilots continued to report strange objects in the sky, none could offer tangible evidence to support their claims.

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But in 1968, over the skies of Riga Latvia, an alleged UFO sighting was caught on film.

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As a Soviet propaganda film crew documented a test flight of a fighter interceptor jet, the pilot noticed an unusual object high in the sky.

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And suddenly the pilot shouted, look, film it! We looked and saw a triangle at a tremendous height.

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Fighter planes scrambled to investigate, but the object quickly disappeared behind a cloud and was never seen again.

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It was later estimated that the craft was hovering approximately 7 miles above the ground.

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The film was sent to the Kremlin where it remained locked from public view for years.

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They really took it seriously. I say seriously, because the film was taken away. It was declared completely secret.

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Outsiders have only recently seen the confiscated film. While some maintain the film is conclusive evidence of a UFO, skeptics argue the vehicle was most likely a French made high altitude research balloon.

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As secrecy enveloped all government discussions of UFO issues, an underground army of Soviet ufologists began to form in the USSR.

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They kept their studies concealed.

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Russians who study UFOs in this period report that they had a very serious feeling of threat from the Soviet government.

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That they were doing something which the Soviet government disapproved of.

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The leader of civilian UFO research was Felix Ziegel, the man considered the father of Soviet ufology.

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Felix Ziegel was a Soviet scientist. He was a doctor of mathematics and astronomy at the Moscow Aviation Institute.

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He made it his job to find out why are the strange objects in disguise of his country.

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Ziegel challenged the Soviet system by conducting paranormal lectures, organizing independent UFO investigations and urging Soviet citizens to report any and all sightings.

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His efforts were not without risk.

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We cannot say of course that people would be put in jail for it, but still Ziegel suffered.

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He was harassed both in his place of work at the Institute of Aviation and he was harassed by the state government authorities.

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Ziegel and his investigators spread information about UFO sightings through an underground press network.

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Samizdat, private publications used to disseminate information were strictly forbidden by the Kremlin.

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In his time brochures were printed in a Samizdat way. There were collections of observations and letters typed in 5-10 copies.

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All materials were typed with the use of carbon paper.

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Samizdat papers were distributed by trustworthy messengers who secretly carried the copies from one person to the next.

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UFO information circulated in this covert manner until 1967 when suddenly it seemed as if ufologists were given a reprieve from government censure.

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Today it appears this respite was a smoke screen, part of an intricate government deception.

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The complex ruse began in 1967 when citizens reported multiple sightings of crescent shaped UFOs over the skies of the Ukraine and the lower Volga Valley.

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It was also seen as far south as the Caucasus Mountains, where many astronomers in observatories in the Caucasus Mountains would see these objects flying horizontally from west to east, crescent shaped heading toward the east.

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For reasons unknown at the time, the government allowed press coverage and independent study of the sightings.

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Felix Ziegel was granted permission to form a government sanctioned investigative committee made up of over 200 scientific and military experts.

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In October 1967 they convened at the Central House of Aviation and Cosmonautics in Moscow.

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Their goal determined the cause of the mass sightings.

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On television and in newspapers Ziegel's committee appealed to Soviet citizens to report information on UFOs.

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For the first time in Soviet history UFOs seemed to be an open topic.

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It was like a breath of fresh air.

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Freedom of discussion about a forbidden subject was permitted to the Soviet citizens and this was something unheard of and alas it did not last long.

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Within a few months of Ziegel's televised appeal, the steel jaws of Soviet censorship clamped down.

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Reporting of UFOs was once again off limits. The subject was dropped from the controlled media and Ziegel's committee was ordered to disband.

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The committee was to encourage people to report. As soon as the reports began to gather somebody in Moscow quashed the activity,

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canceled the committee, canceled publication of further works and put a lid on it.

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Cries of a Kremlin whitewash were immediately sounded.

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Why the cover-up takes place, I don't know. Is there a cover-up? There's no question about it.

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But what they were covering up is the question. UFO buffs believe they were covering up alien visitations.

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I think the evidence is clear they were covering up discussions, descriptions of their own secret military aircraft and missile activities and satellite activities.

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Scientist and NASA consultant James Ober came to this conclusion in 1977 after studying Soviet space vehicle launch patterns and comparing them to the dates of the 1967 sightings.

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He deduced that the crescent-shaped objects witnessed in the sky were not alien in nature, but could be attributed to secret tests of a new Soviet missile warhead.

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People in the area saw the rockets, especially at night, saw the streamers, the contrails in the sky, even heard the rockets.

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They were told by the government that there was nothing there, that it was not anything ours. It became a UFO phenomenon.

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Later dubbed by the Pentagon as a fractional orbital bombardment system, the Soviets had good reason to keep the tests secret.

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It was designed to sneak under our radar as a first-strike weapon. It was one of these scary things that you only build it if you mean to make a sneak attack.

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It was also illegal to have such a weapon because in 1967 the U.S. and Russia and other countries signed a treaty forbidding the placing of nuclear weapons into orbit.

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But why, after crushing public dissemination of UFO information for years, did the government briefly loosen its restrictions in 1967?

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It appears now to have been a deliberate ploy to fool its citizens and the international community about the true nature of the sightings.

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The Soviet government did not want the public to understand what was going on. They didn't want the Americans to know, for example, what was going on.

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It was a useful camouflage. It diverted people's attention. Because it was a UFO, western journalists would laugh rather than investigate it.

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The cover-up by the Soviet government is in letting people think they're flying saucers.

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The strategy backfired when the extensive UFO data collected by Felix Siegel's committee was published in magazines.

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The Soviet government realized what these reports really were, their military secrets. Not described accurately, but accurately enough to be of use to the CIA if they ever caught on.

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The government said, oh my gosh, and other things in Russian, and said no more UFO reports get published in the Soviet Union.

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For ten years, public discussion of UFOs was effectively brought to a halt. But that would change in 1977 with the appearance of a strange-looking object over Soviet skies, witnessed by thousands of astonished citizens.

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September 20, 1977. As dawn approached in the small Russian port city of Petrozovsk, a spectacular aerial display lit up the skies.

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The incident would become one of the most studied UFO sightings in Soviet history.

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The phenomenon of Petrozovsky is one of the greatest abnormal phenomena on the territory of our country.

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At approximately four o'clock in the morning, civilians and military personnel reported seeing huge star-like apparitions shooting in the sky.

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As it flew up in the sky, it appeared to come over the city and then head off, head off toward the horizon.

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People who were out in the streets of the town saw this blazing jellyfish, a trimming tentacles down from the saucer-shaped to bright corn.

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The impressive display lasted approximately ten minutes. Witnesses claimed that a host of strange occurrences on the ground accompanied the sighting.

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They report all sorts of phenomena. They smelled ozone, computers were crashing, drivers lost control of their vehicles and went to dishes.

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Perhaps the phenomenon most difficult to explain was the appearance of finely glazed holes in glass windows and rocks around the city.

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There is no explanation for this fact, but the connection is direct by the time parameters. There had been no holes before the event and then they appeared.

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Witnessed by thousands, the aerial display above Petrozovsky was impossible to refute.

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While the sighting remained a mystery to Soviet citizens, NASA consultant James Oberg quickly discovered its origins.

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Because of my connection with the space program and my knowledge of satellites and rockets, I was able to find out within a matter of hours.

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There was a rocket launching that morning from a secret space center north of Moscow at precise at the time people were seeing this UFO.

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The jellyfish-like display was triggered by the launch of the Cosmos 955 spy satellite.

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As the rocket engine contrails were backlit by the rising morning sun, it produced the tentacle effect observed by witnesses.

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So this, what they call basically the smoking gun of Soviet ufology, they call it a medusa or jellyfish UFO because it was streamers of light coming down from the streamers and the rocket engines of the rocket as it turned out.

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As with previous mass sightings, the government had ample reason to keep the truth hidden from Soviet citizens.

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The satellite was launched from a secret military space center called Plesetsk, one of several undisclosed missile bases scattered throughout the Soviet Union.

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Most ufologists accept the satellite launch as the cause of the aerial display, but many argue it does not fully clarify the mystery.

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How shall we explain the appearance of some beams that burnt the glass?

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When the pieces of the glass were analyzed at the Institute of Metrology in Moscow, they concluded that these holes resulted from badly glazed window glass, that is, a purely technical defect took place.

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I do not believe that the launch of a secret military satellite would explain the holes that were made in the glass.

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My personal opinion, no, this was not man-made technology that's responsible for such effects.

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There were some reports of holes being drilled into glass window panes and in paving stones. I saw those reports, I can't explain it.

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All these sorts of additional phenomena, these additional reports are typical of what happens when people see a very sudden shocking sight in the sky and look around them for corroborative evidence.

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Most of the time it's irrelevant, independent and sometimes even imaginary.

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While the mysterious holes might never be fully explained, the Petrozovsk incident had much deeper consequences inside the walls of the Kremlin.

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The upshot of this incident was the decision of the Soviet government to create a secret program to study your force.

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In the weeks following the Petrozovsk sighting, the Soviet Academy of Sciences received inquiries from several European nations concerned about the nature of the event.

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In response, the Academy of Sciences requested permission from the Kremlin to initiate a top secret investigation of anomalous occurrences.

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Although aware the majority of these events were not paranormal in nature, the scientists admitted in their request that they could not provide a scientific basis for all UFO sightings.

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The Academy of Sciences can neither ignore or explain the paranormal phenomena similar to that observed in September 1977 in Petrozovsk.

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The program was organized to show that we did not know the answers to these questions and would be studying it on the scientific level.

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That was the way the official scientific program for studying abnormal phenomena and extraterrestrial flying objects started its work in the Soviet Union.

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In 1978, the investigation that later became known as Institute 22 was formally started.

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The study lasted 13 years and was completely concealed from public view.

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But why did the Soviet government spend time and money to investigate a phenomenon it already knew the origins of?

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There's really no surprise that the Soviet military, even if they understood the nature of most of these reports, would still investigate them.

233
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The Soviets traditionally spied on themselves as severely as they spied on the West.

234
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If they already knew that these are missile tests, why do they have to have a nationwide study behind the scenes?

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I mean, it's not like the results of the study were ever going to be published anywhere. It was a secret. So it makes no sense.

236
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While the rationale for the beginnings of the study is still debated, there is no doubt the scope of the investigation was far reaching.

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The Institute 22 inquiry was conducted jointly between the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Defense.

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It was very useful for the Academy of Sciences to collaborate and to carry out studies together with the Ministry of Defense,

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because naturally it was much easier for the Ministry of Defense to get the information we had no access to.

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The armed forces were ordered to study what, if any, influence possible UFOs might have on the proper functioning of technical military equipment.

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In addition, hundreds of thousands of sailors, soldiers and pilots were recruited to watch for and report on UFOs.

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No one was told why the reports were being taken.

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The Ministry of Defense has an enormous observance potential. First, military units are located all over the country.

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Second, unlike civil organizations, an order from the Ministry of Defense is sufficient for making a potential viewer of each military man, and this was done.

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Every single unit in the vast Soviet military empire had to comply with this study.

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That is, any UFO, any anomalous object, any ball of light, any strange thing in the sky whatsoever, had to be fully investigated.

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Scientists were directed to investigate the physical nature of alleged paranormal phenomena.

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The data collected by the military and scientists was analyzed in a lab located in a nondescript building in a suburb of Moscow.

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The personnel of the laboratory were not numerous, not more than 10 people, and this number was never exceeded.

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But the specialists from almost all the scientific areas worked there, from a physician to specialists in radio electronics, meteorology and astrogeophysics.

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Practically all the specialists were represented there. It was done in order to study all possible aspects of UFOs.

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Six years into the study, Institute 22 would be called on to scrutinize an incident of global consequence.

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When a suspected UFO incident placed the world on the brink of nuclear war.

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The early 1980s were a time of tense relations between the Soviet Union and the West.

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The era of DTOT had ended and the Russian landscape was studded with intercontinental ballistic missile silos.

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Each contained nuclear weapons aimed westward.

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It was at one of these silos that a reported UFO incident caused a nuclear scare.

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Today this ICBM silo in the Ukraine is deserted, dismantled in compliance with a nuclear arms reduction treaty between the US and USSR.

259
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But at this silo in 1982 something went terribly wrong.

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It started at approximately 6 p.m. when soldiers and villagers in the nearby town of Bielokorovichi witnessed a strange object in the dust sky.

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A military officer at the time described what he saw.

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I was riding a motorcycle not far from here. I saw a large object in the air.

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It had a perfect geometric shape.

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At the same moment inside the silo an emergency warning light indicated that a nuclear missile had switched to launch mode.

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The most telling testimony comes from the communications officer who said that somehow something entered the correct code.

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But Moscow had not ordered a missile.

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The most telling testimony comes from the communications officer who said that somehow something entered the correct code.

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But Moscow had not ordered a launch nor had any personnel in the bunker touch the control panel.

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For 15 agonizing seconds technicians frantically scrambled to stop the launch.

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Then without explanation the launch sequence was aborted.

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They were ready for launch. The UFO poof goes away. Poof the command control module goes back to normal.

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Had a UFO somehow interfered with the launch controls of a nuclear missile?

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A team of investigators from Institute 22 the secret state sponsored UFO research team was immediately ordered to the missile base.

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They established within a very short period literally half a day.

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That the military training exercise took place at the nearby aerial ground.

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Investigators learned that the sighting occurred at the same time and in the same area where the military was testing flares.

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Dropped out of planes the flares provided 5 to 7 minutes of illumination.

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That explained the strange display in the sky. But why did the nuclear launch sequence activate?

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The fact that the emergency situation coincided with the effects which took place is certainly a remarkable coincidence.

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But it is still a coincidence.

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The ICBM control equipment was systematically taken apart and rebuilt. But no defects were found.

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That's not just an electrical malfunction. Something entered the correct launch codes. That just doesn't happen every day.

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We hear from our government UFOs are not a matter of national security.

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The Russian government has been telling its people the same thing. They're trying to confuse us.

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This incident is clear evidence if ever there was that UFOs do carry national security implications.

286
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After examining the ICBM episode the investigative team of Institute 22 continued to scrutinize various sightings around the country.

287
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Some who reported UFOs had a much closer view than those on Earth.

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Cosmonauts.

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The first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, is quoted in the Thread 3 documents as saying,

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I can tell you that UFOs are real and if you allow me I'll tell you a lot more.

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The second man in space, Cosmonaut Titoff said that there were seven UFOs dancing around his space capsule during his brief flight into space.

292
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However, even to this day most cosmonauts are reluctant to speak about any unusual phenomenon they witnessed in space.

293
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There's a ridicule factor, there's a laughter curtain, there are career consequences from reporting a UFO and taking it seriously.

294
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But in this rare interview obtained by the History Channel, two cosmonauts spoke of unusual objects they encountered in space.

295
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Many cosmonauts have seen phenomena which are far beyond the experiences of Earth men.

296
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For ten years I never spoke of such things.

297
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Former Commander Vladimir Kovlyonik of the Salyut 6 space station revealed that on May 5th 1981 he observed an unrecognizable illuminated entity outside the porthole of his craft.

298
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The object had an elliptical shape and flew with us. It only flew straight but then a kind of explosion happened.

299
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It produced a golden light, very beautiful to watch.

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A second explosion followed and two spheres appeared. As we enter the darkness of Earth's shadow I could no longer see them.

301
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On a mere mission in 1991 cosmonaut Musa Manorov managed to videotape an anomalous object during a routine docking procedure.

302
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I was looking out the biggest window. It was directly in front of me.

303
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I am familiar with the construction of all spaceships but this was different.

304
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There is ongoing debate about sightings of unidentified objects by cosmonauts and American astronauts alike.

305
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Skeptics insist there is enough debris left in orbit to constitute a plethora of unusual sightings.

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As cosmonauts traveled amidst the stars the 1990s saw major changes take place on Soviet soil.

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When the walls of communism crumbled American UFO investigator George Knapp ventured to Russia hoping to discover just what secrets the Soviets had been hiding about alien encounters.

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What he found was startling.

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Beginning in the mid 1980s the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union conducted several summits aimed at reducing both nuclear arms and tensions between the two superpowers.

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Shortly after one such meeting President Ronald Reagan revealed he and Mikhail Gorbachev had discussed the topic of alien encounters.

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I couldn't help but say to him just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held.

312
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If suddenly there was a threat to this world from some other species from another planet outside in the universe we'd forget all the little local differences that we have between our countries.

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Reagan made five different public statements including one to the United Nations that wouldn't it be something if UFOs were suddenly a threat to us and we'd all get together.

314
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And so Gorbachev kind of responded, yeah sure would, you know we would get together.

315
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Lo and behold we did get together.

316
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You know the wall came tumbling down, perestroika, glass nose.

317
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With the collapse of the Soviet Union came a new era of openness in Russia.

318
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Thousands of miles away in Las Vegas, Nevada investigative journalist George Knapp who had studied many American UFO incidents realized the time was perfect to explore Russian reports.

319
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Three years ago we had succeeded in obtaining several hundred pages of secret Russian UFO documents and photos other Western journalists followed.

320
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Today it's a new ball game.

321
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The lid has been dropped on government UFO files although there is still plenty of information to be found.

322
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It occurred to me now may be the time to go ahead and try to find out what the Russians know about UFOs.

323
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It was a tumultuous crazy time but a wonderful time to be there as a journalist.

324
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In 1993 Knapp traveled to Russia and was introduced to Boris Sokolov, the coordinator of Institute 22.

325
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Like many government funded scientific projects from the era, Institute 22's funding had been cut and the project disbanded.

326
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Sokolov provided Knapp with some of the recently declassified UFO files containing information on the cases that were more difficult to explain.

327
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He had culled from the thousands of reports some of the most interesting ones and had kept them in these binders and we were able to get them and bring them back.

328
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Why would the Russian military study all of this stuff?

329
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Colonel Sokolov said it was a very practical reason. They knew that UFOs could do things that their planes couldn't.

330
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Figured by studying it they may be able to get an advantage over us in terms of stealth technology.

331
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Upon returning to the United States, Knapp made some of the files public.

332
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As a result, Colonel Sokolov was ridiculed by some back in his homeland.

333
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Officially Russia was a democracy but the communists still had a lot of influence.

334
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There were communist newspapers that attacked him broadly as being a sellout to Mother Russia.

335
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But the public scorn Sokolov endured was certainly less severe than the consequences he might have been subject to in the old Soviet Union.

336
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My friend put it this way. He said if this had happened five years ago we would be in prison.

337
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If it had happened ten years ago we'd all be shot for giving up these secrets.

338
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But in 2000 the relaxed political climate allowed Sokolov and scientist Yulia Platov to publish a report summarizing the findings of Institute 22.

339
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Entitled the History of UFO State Research in the USSR, the report concluded that of the 3,000 UFO sightings investigated,

340
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90 to 95% of the incidents could be attributed to man-made phenomenon, mostly missile launches and research balloons.

341
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The remaining 5 to 10% could not be easily explained.

342
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He was not willing to conclude that any of these things were extraterrestrials or inter-dimensionals or aliens from the future or anything of that sort.

343
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The thing is that before the enthusiastic ufologists had affirmed in literature that all we saw was due to contacts with the extraterrestrial civilizations.

344
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No, no, no, it turned out that only a very small percentage of events remained unexplained.

345
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But in a land that for so long concealed information and suppressed dialogue, many ufologists wondered if the report revealed the entire truth.

346
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There is a vast treasure trove of KGB documents on this topic somewhere that no one has ever seen.

347
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And I know the KGB did release some documents in the early 90s, but it is presumed by a lot of folks that the best stuff is still hidden in a vault somewhere.

348
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What happened to the files? Who keeps them? Until we ourselves go through the files, we cannot say whether what Mr. Platov and Mr. Sokolov say is true.

349
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It will probably never be known exactly how many Soviet UFO files remain classified or what they contain.

350
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Most in the scientific community doubt any smoking guns exist in the unseen files.

351
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People in Russia still have a very powerful sense of gossip and rumors because under Soviet days so many things were illegal to talk about, illegal to know.

352
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So they replaced the reality with a very rich mythology.

353
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UFOs became part of that mythology in Russia and it's still a very powerful theme over there.

354
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But many UFO enthusiasts remain suspicious, believing that the proof of alien encounters exists and is still being hidden.