UFO reports, declassified by the feds, are now available for amateur X-Files enthusiasts to pore over and search for evidence of alien life, government conspiracies and the like. Over 100,000 documents, cobbled together and classified by the U.S. Air Force, have been released for public perusal.

UFO Sightings Chart, The National Archives, 1969 / Wikimedia Commons

Writes USA Today on Jan. 20: "The truth is out there — now on the Web. The fabled Project Blue Book, the Air Force's files on UFO sightings and investigations, have tantalized and frustrated extraterrestrial enthusiasts for decades. But this past week, nearly 130,000 pages of declassified UFO records — a trove that would make Agent Fox Mulder's mouth water — were put online."

Project Blue Book, initiated in the late 1940s and terminated in 1969, contains thousands of accounts of UFO sightings with dozens of origin explanations – everything from meteors streaking across the sky to wobbling weather balloons to juvenile pranks. The 12,618 reports include a hefty dose of phenomena caused by the secret U.S. reconnaissance U-2 and A-12 plane program.

The releasing of the documents is the work of UFO enthusiast John Greenewald – and decades worth of Freedom of Information Act requests. Fox News reports that out of the 12,000-plus reports categorized by Blue Book, "701 incidents remain 'unidentified.' While the documents do not shed any new light on UFO sightings, they do not quiet the fascination of conspiracy theorists."

Greenewald uploaded the released files – including information on the Air Force's UFO programs that predated Blue Book, to his website, The Black Vault. "People have this fascination when it comes to UFOs," Greenewald said. "We can have our speculation that it's top secret, but we simply don't know."

According to the findings of Blue Book, which had as its set goal to "determine if UFOs were a threat to national security, and to scientifically analyze UFO-related data," the Air Force concluded at the time that "no UFO reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security [and] there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as 'unidentified' are extraterrestrial vehicles."

Greenewald though is buoyed by the release of the information, and believes it to be just the beginnings of a mountain of still-classified documents that will confirm that the U.S. is aware of extraterrestrial life. "They claim that this is it," Greenewald said, adding that in his opinion, it's just the "tip of the iceberg with what the military and U.S. government is hiding behind the UFO phenomenon."

Read more...