CIA document release acknowledges Area 51_美文

CIA document release acknowledges Area 51

Reports of unidentified flying objects in the Nevada desert started to roll in, the report said.

"High altitude testing of the U-2 soon led to an unexpected side effect - a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects," it said.

The reports of UFOs often came from pilots from commercial airliners in the early evening hours, with the U-2 plane's silver wings reflecting the rays of the sun.

The surveillance planes appeared to be "fiery objects" high in the sky, it said.

"At this time, no one believed manned flight was possible above 60,000 feet, so no one expected to see an object so high in the sky," it said.

The commercial pilots and other observers on the ground wrote letters to an Air Force unit in Dayton, Ohio, charged with investigating such sightings.

Anxious to avoid exposing the ultra-secret U-2 program, Air Force officers explained the sightings as merely due to natural phenomena, though they knew the high-flying U-2 was the true cause.

U-2 and other surveillance flights "accounted for more than one-half of all UFO reports during the late 1950s and most of the 1960s", it said.

The 400-page report, titled "Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and Oxcart Programs, 1954-1974," was released as a result of a Freedom of Information request dating to 2005 from the National Security Archives at George Washington University.