The Defense Intelligence Agency Reports on UF

The Defense Intelligence Agency Reports on UFOs - Part 5

Posted On: September 12, 2022

The Defense Intelligence Agency Reports on UFOs - Part 5

In 1985 the Defense Intelligence Agency released 139 pages of UFO related reports. Here is some information related to those released files. In this segment we will hear about events that took place in Tehran, Bolivia and Peru.

1978: Tehran

Further sightings in Iran interested the DIA in 1978. The following case, though not acquired through official sources, merits inclusion here. The report was sent by the local Defense Attache's office to the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Department of Defense, Pentagon, this being the normal routing for foreign intelligence reports. As with the previous case, the distribution list included the Secretary of State, National Security Agency, and the CIA. The report was quoted from the Iranian English language newspaper, Tehran Journal, dated 18 July 1978:

An unidentified flying object was seen by a number of people in the northern part of the city on Sunday night. Officials from the control tower at Mehrabad Airport and a Lufthansa aircrew also reported unusual readings on their instruments.

Residents in northern Tehran were the first to spot the strange glowing object floating toward Saveh. They had been sleeping on the terraces of their houses, and immediately informed the control tower at Mehrabad Airport and the National Radio Network. The control tower confirmed the existence of the object but would give no further details. Soon afterward, the Lufthansa plane sent in its report.

A similar flying object was seen last April by a local airline pilot, who claimed that he had photographed the object, but could not release photographs until the security division of the civil aviation authorities gave their permission. He claimed that while flying between Ahvaz and Tehran at 24000 feet, he and his co-pilot had sighted a glittering object and had managed to photograph it. A Mehrabad radar control official said that on that occasion they had detected an object some 20 times the size of a jumbo jet on their screens.

Civil Aviation Organization chief has, called for an investigation but the results of this inquiry have not yet been made public. An eye witness said yesterday that he was alone on his balcony on Sunday night when suddenly he saw the object emerge in the sky and hover directly above him. "I was so upset that I wanted to scream, but could not do so", he said. He added that he felt better once he realized that his neighbors had also seen it.

1979: Bolivia.

An unevaluated DIA intelligence report, titled "Moon Dust, Object Found Near Santa Cruz", describes an intriguing story of an unidentified object which was recovered on a farm near Santa Cruz, Bolivia, in August 1979. The object was "possibly a fuel tank or part of a satellite", according to the Defense Attache at the US Embassy in La Paz, yet seems to have remained unidentified. Furthermore, there had been a similar occurrence in Bolivia in May 1978 which led to an interesting exchange of cables between the Embassy and the State Department. In this earlier case, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance replied in a secret cable that, having checked with the appropriate government agencies, "No direct correlation with known space objects that may have entered the earth's atmosphere near May 6 can be made."

According to the DIA report, a strange object was found on a farm near Santa Cruz on 16 August 1979, which was about seventy centimeters in diameter and two meters in circumference with a hole in one side and a metal skin covering of about a half-inch thickness. The El Deber newspaper of 17 August quoted Colonel Ariel Coca, Director of the Bolivian Air Force Academy, as saying that the sphere was made of a special light alloy, but very resistant, and had no signs or marks that could identify its origin. Colonel Coca said that he would inform his superiors about "the phenomenon" so that a study could be made to determine its origin, and an analysis made in case it was radioactive. An accompanying photograph showed the colonel examining the sphere, which had a hole in it measuring about nine inches in diameter. The DIA report added that a movie film and color prints of the object would be forwarded to the Agency's DT-3 division (Technical Data and Foreign Material Branch, Directorate of Scientific and Technical Intelligence).

Another such object was discovered on the same day, according to El Diario of 19 August. This second one was found 200 kilometers north of Santa Cruz by Gonzalo Menacho Viveras, who heard a whistling sound and saw a "fireball", followed by an explosion. After dawn on the Friday morning the witness started looking around the area of impact and found a sphere. Since it was not heavy he took it home and kept it there until his friend Nataniel Hurtado learned of the other sphere in Cotoca and passed on information about the second object. He said that the following evening a "silent aircraft" with three lights was seen flying over the explosion site.

Although the witnesses in both cases reported the objects as "fireballs", no signs of impact could be seen in the areas where they were discovered, and the spheres appeared to have landed smoothly. The witness who discovered the second sphere said that there were some burned plants in the immediate area but no sign of impact on the soft ground. The object weighed about six kilograms and had a diameter of eighty centimeters. The outside metal was similar to copper, and had apparently been exposed to very high temperatures. It was made of two pieces joined without any signs of rivets and had a hole of irregular shape in the top and next to it another small round hole. In both these the material had melted and at the end of the sphere there was a round area that looked like "a cork in a bottle held in place by three semi- melted screws.” An explosion had apparently destroyed the interior of the spheres.

The DIA has not released any evaluation of these cases, although it is doubtful if the objects were anything other than terrestrial in origin, despite a few puzzling factors.

1980: Peru.

Last but certainly not least of the DIA documents relates to two sightings by Peruvian Air Force personnel in May 1980, including the interception and attempted destruction of a UFO. The source of information was a Peruvian Air Force officer who, according to the US Air Attache in Lima, "observed the event and is in a position to be party to conversation concerning the event. Source has reported reliably in the past". The details of this extraordinary case are as follows:

"SOURCE TOLD RO ABOUT THE SPOTTING OF AN UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT IN THE VICINITY OF MARIANO MELGAR AIR BASE, LA JOYA, (PERU 16805S, 0715306W). SOURCE STATED THAT THE VEHICLE WAS SPOTTED ON TWO DIFFERENT OCCASIONS. THE FIRST WAS DURING THE MORNING HOURS OF 9 MAY 80, AND THE SECOND DURING THE EARLY EVENING HOURS OF 10 MAY 80.

SOURCE STATED THAT ON 9 MAY, WHILE A GROUP OF FAP [PERUVIAN AIR FORCE] OFFICERS WERE IN FORMATION AT MARIANO MALGAR [sic], THEY SPOTTED A UFO THAT WAS ROUND IN SHAPE, HOVERING NEAR THE AIRFIELD. THE AIR COMMANDER SCRAMBLED AN SU-22 [Sukhoi] AIRCRAFT TO MAKE AN INTERCEPT. THE PILOT, ACCORDING TO A THIRD PARTY, INTERCEPTED THE VEHICLE AND FIRED UPON IT AT VERY CLOSE RANGE WITHOUT CAUSING ANY APPARENT DAMAGE. THE PILOT TRIED TO MAKE A SECOND PASS ON THE VEHICLE, BUT THE UFO OUT RAN THE SU-22.

THE SECOND SIGHTING WAS DURING THE HOURS OF DARKNESS. THE VEHICLE WAS LIGHTED. AGAIN AN SU-22 WAS SCRAMBLED, BUT THE VEHICLE OUT RAN THE AIRCRAFT.

RO HAS HEARD DISCUSSION ABOUT THE SIGHTING FROM OTHER SOURCES. APPARENTLY SOME VEHICLE WAS SPOTTED, BUT ITS ORIGIN REMAINS UNKNOWN."

The Defense Attache did not request an evaluation from the DIA, presumably because it was obvious that a genuine UFO was involved and there would have been little point in further commentary.

The distribution list for the report included, again, the National Security Agency, Secretary of State and the CIA. In view of the CIA's statement to me that "there is no organized Central Intelligence Agency effort to do research in connection with the UFO phenomena, nor has there been an organized effort to collect intelligence on UFOs since the 1950s", one wonders why the CIA remained on the DIA distribution list from the period 1976-80, unless the CIA's qualifying rider that they have received "various kinds of reports of UFO sightings" since the 1950s would account for this inconsistency.

Another puzzling factor is the complete absence of British and Australian reports among the declassified DIA documents. Britain and Australia have had an enormous number of sightings over the years, as we have seen. Are we to conclude that some of these reports, especially the military ones, are of no interest to the Agency? I do not believe this for one moment, and am convinced that there is an agreement between the DIA and British as well as Australian defense intelligence chiefs not to include such documentation in the released Freedom of Information cases. There is a very close liaison, for example, between the DIA and the Ministry of Defense, via the Defense Intelligence Agency Liaison in London (DIALL), which has its office in the MoD's main building in Whitehall. In view of Britain's "special relationship" with the DIA, CIA, and NSA, it seems logical to me that UFO reports of significance would be passed on to the DIA by the MoD, just as reports would also be forwarded to the NSA by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Britain's equivalent of the NSA which works hand in glove with that Agency. The British government, having as yet no Freedom of Information Act, is anxious not to compromise its official position vis-a-vis the UFO controversy, but I am reliably informed that there is a close interchange of information on the subject by the relevant agencies.

Despite some obviously significant reports, the DIA has not released any worthwhile analyses, with the exception of the 1976 Tehran case. This is probably at the request of the Director of Central Intelligence, who in addition to being head of the CIA manages the entire community of intelligence agencies throughout the US government. Admiral Stansfield Turner, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) during the Carter administration, is scathing about the DIA's analytic product, however, which he describes as "well below the caliber of the rest of the Intelligence Community". Admiral Turner also points out that the CIA's analytic work competes with that of the DIA and other intelligence agencies, and leaves us in no doubt that the CIA is superior in this respect. Unlike the CIA, the DIA cannot present its analyses directly to the National Security Council, although the Secretary of Defense can, if he chooses, present DIA estimates that differ from those of the CIA. Of course, neither agency is prepared to release its analyses of the UFO phenomenon, so we are forced to draw our own conclusions from the released documents. Perhaps we should be grateful for these. At the same time, the DIA denied for years that they possessed any documents on UFOs other than those few they released in the late 1970s; further evidence that governments worldwide are reluctant to acknowledge their serious concern with the ubiquitous UFO phenomenon.

Resources: Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, 1988.

My Take: This is just the tip of the iceberg of the government’s real interest in UFOs. This information is just what has been released through the cracks in the government’s cone of silence

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