The CIA rode “The X-Files” trend and published lists of its top declassified UFO documents last week.
The lists, titled “Top 5 CIA Documents Mulder Would Love to Get His Hands On” and “Top 5 CIA Documents Scully Would Love to Get Her Hands On,” feature cases from the late 1940s to 1950s.
This was a period of intense CIA interest in unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Around the same time, the Air Force recorded 12,618 sightings, of which 701 remain “unidentified,” as part of Project Blue Book.
Former CIA Chief Historian Gerald K. Haines is quoted by the CIA as saying: “While the Agency’s concern over UFOs was substantial until the early 1950s, CIA has since paid only limited and peripheral attention to the phenomenon.”
One of the cases is titled “Flying Saucers Reported Over East Germany, 1952.”
Former mayor of Gleimershausen, Germany, Oscar Linke reported a UFO sighting. The report reads: “According to this story, an object ’resembling a huge flying pan' and having a diameter of about 15 meters [16.5 yards] landed in a forest clearing in the Soviet Zone of Germany.”
