In a CIA #Bestof2014 tweet published Monday, the Agency admitted being behind more than half of the UFO sightings logged in the 1950s and 1960s.
— CIA (@CIA) December 29, 2014
The tweet, which references one of the CIA’s most read articles, directs followers to “The CIA and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974,” a 272-page document from 1998 written by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach and tweeted by the Agency under the title “KAKE” last July.
The article focuses on the U-2, which took its first flight in 1955 and became instrumental during the Cold War in the 1950s and ‘60’s.
The early CIA spy plane was tested at 60,000 feet, an altitude then believed to be impossible for man to reach during the two decades, leading observers, especially pilots, to suspect it wasn’t man flying the plane. That’s why it was often mistaken for an alien craft.
According to the report, in the mid-1950s, most commercial airliners stuck between altitudes 10,000 and 20,000 feet; military aircraft kept it below 40,000 feet.
"Consequently, once U-2s started flying at altitudes above 60,000 feet, air-traffic controllers began receiving increasing numbers of UFO reports," the document explains. In fact, the CIA actually cross-checked the UFO reports with its flight records, but in instances where it verified the UFO was really a U-2, it stayed mum.
Reports were mostly made "in the early evening hours from pilots of airlines flying from east to west." After the sun dropped below the horizon, the U-2s would look like "fiery objects."
The report also reveals that ground-based UFO spotters often wrote letters to the Air Force. "This, in turn, led to the Air Force's Operation BLUE BOOK," which "collected all reports of UFO sightings" and "attempted to explain such sightings by linking them to natural phenomena."
The report was part of documents declassified in 2013 that famously detailed the existence of Area 51 in Nevada.
As for the rest of the CIA's top 10, it includes a look at a day in the life of a "not yet burned out" CIA Operations Center officer and a confirmation that pigeon missions remain classified.
And as for the UFO sightings not explained by the CIA, the imagination may continue to run wild.
