NOTICE: The page below has been permenently FROZEN as of January 2000. Due to resource limitations, this section of our website is no longer maintained, so some links may not work and some information may be out of date. We have retained this page for archive reference only, and we cannot vouch for its accuracy. Broken links will not be repaired, and minor errors will not be corrected. You are responsible for independently verifying any information you may find here. More Info
For more recent information about Area 51, see the new Area 51 Research Center maintained by Don Emory.
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From: Francisco Lopez <d005734c@dc.seflin.org> Date: Mon, 29 Sep 1997 22:24:34 -0800 |
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 23:12:59 -0400 (EDT) Subject: UFOR: Investigative Reporting into UFOs and the Military From: Michael Ravnitzky <mikerav@ix.netcom.com> Investigative Reporting into UFOs and the Military: A New Research Tool by Michael Ravnitzky, mikerav@ix.netcom.com In 1996, the United States Air Force received thousands of FOIA Requests. Between 20% and 25% of these requests concerned UFOs and other exotic or paranormal technologies. In 1996, the Air Force and the CIA described the use of UFO reports as cover for advanced aircraft and satellite projects. In 1996 and 1997, the Air Force released previously unclassified documents on balloon projects, such as Mogul, which were interpreted by the public as UFOs. For the past ten years, I've been interested in the technological history of UFOs, and the sociological structure of the military-civilian relationship regarding UFOs. *What are UFOs* is a legitimate reporting subject that is also of great interest to the public. The problem with much of the crap that is published on this fascinating subject is that it is unsubstantiated. For years, the Air Force simply ignored requests for information and merely referred requesters to the National Archives. Last year, I identified the location of a huge cache of secret documents on UFO's and related subjects, most of which haven't seen the light of day in thirty or forty years. But I need to give you a little background first. The Defense Department has stored away literally thousands of tons of records around the country. One location is the military archives at St. Louis and another is the military archives at Suitland, Maryland. Each box of records at those archives has an associated SF-135 form, Standard Form 135, which describes and inventories the contents of that particular box. The focal point for UFOs in the Department of Defense was for many years an Air Force Intelligence Component located at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. The original name for the office was the Foreign Technology Division-FTD, later it was called FASTC-Foreign Aerospace Technology Center, and now it is called National Air Intelligence Center - NAIC. The primary mission of this office has been to acquire and to analyze foreign aerospace technology. Their mission has been relatively continuous since before World War II, while Wright Field, originally named McCook Field, was still an Army Air Force Base. So they've been doing what they've been doing for a long time. They have a database with ten million records called CIRC, which dates back to the late 1960's. But even this is just foreign records. So what happened to the domestic and earlier foreign records from the 1940's to the 1970's, including the UFO materials? Well, over the years, this Air Force office sent approximately 3000 boxes of records to the military storage archives. How do I know this? According to Gery D. Heulsemen, TSgt, USAF, who runs the FOIA program at NAIC, his office has recently obtained 2959 pages of SF-135 forms which describe in detail the contents of these boxes, many still classified, shipped over to archives over the past fifty years. The SF-135s cover the time period, 1953 through 1982, approximately. According to Heulseman, no one has ever requested a set of these forms. He adds that the forms have not been entered or scanned into an electronic database, nor is it likely that they will be. However, he feels that these forms could help locate records responsive to the types of requests that they receive through the Air Force. In most cases, however, his office simply does not have the time to peruse these pages in order to try to locate responsive records. However, with these forms in hand, an investigative reporter could very well put his or her finger on documents which might illustrate the real story behind some of these strange phenomena. At a cost of 15 cents per page, the 2,959 pages [less the first 100 free pages] would cost $428.85. An enterprising reporter with a reputable organization might just be able to swing a fee waiver if he or she described how these records would illustrate the workings of government, and would have a good likelihood of publication to the general public. The address to obtain a set of these forms is: National Air Intelligence Center [NAIC/SCVMS/FOIA] Attn: Gery D. Huelseman, TSgt, USAF Chief, Freedom of Information Act Office Information Management Operations 4180 Watson Way Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio 45433-5648 I hope that some news organization or researcher can use these records to finally tell the real story of what happened when the military ran into the unexplainable.
Index: Government UFO Cover-Up
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Created: Sep 30, 1997