{"type":"documents","slug":"2026-pursue-release-03-016-cia-uap-007-current-status-of-unidentified-flying-objects-ufo-project","title":"CIA-UAP-007: Current Status of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) Project","url":"https://disclosdex.com/documents/2026-pursue-release-03-016-cia-uap-007-current-status-of-unidentified-flying-objects-ufo-project","description":"December 1953 CIA memo updating the status of the Air Force UFO project, covering intelligence operations, camera procurement, and allied government activities.","date":"1953-12-17T00:00:00.000Z","tags":["Report"],"updated":"2026-06-12T00:00:00.000Z","disclosureRating":7,"connectionCount":0,"content":{"markdown":"CIA-UAP-007 is an internal Central Intelligence Agency memorandum dated 17 December 1953, released in PURSUE Release 03 on June 12, 2026. The document was prepared by the Chief of the Physics and Electronics Division of the CIA's Scientific Intelligence (SI) directorate, addressed to the Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence, and signed by Todos M. Odarenko. The Department of War lists the originating agency as the CIA; no incident location is recorded in the release metadata.[^1][^2]\n\n<PDF src=\"https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/061226/release_03/documents/CIA-UAP-007_Current_Status_of_Unidentified_Flying_Objects_UFO_Project.pdf\" />\n\n## Provenance and Chain of Custody\n\nThe memorandum was drafted in response to a verbal request from Mr. Brent, Executive Officer of the Scientific Intelligence division, conveyed on 30 November 1953. It carries a SECRET classification. The CIA's Physics and Electronics Division had formally assumed responsibility for the OSI (Office of Scientific Intelligence) UFOB project effective 27 May 1953.\n\nThe release note accompanying the document observes that a more heavily redacted version of this memorandum has previously been available on the CIA's public website. The PURSUE Release 03 version therefore represents a less-redacted disclosure than what had been publicly accessible, though significant portions of the British-related section remain redacted in this release as well.[^3]\n\n## CIA's Defined Role: Monitoring, Not Investigating\n\nThe memorandum opens by defining the precise and deliberately limited scope of CIA involvement. The Physics and Electronics Division's mandate was restricted to \"maintaining awareness of the activities of other agencies (notably the USAF) in the unidentified flying objects business and to maintenance of files.\" This is a significant institutional admission: the CIA was not conducting independent UFOB investigations in December 1953. Its role was secondary and administrative -- watching what others were doing and keeping records -- rather than exercising operational or investigative authority over the subject.\n\n## Air Force Activity: Project Blue Book\n\nThe Air Force's ATIC (Air Technical Intelligence Center) project was catalogued under Bluebook Number 10073 and operated out of the Aerial Phenomena Section of the Electronics Branch, Technical Analysis Division at ATIC. Personnel levels were minimal: one officer (Captain Charles A. Hardin), one airman (Airman First Class Max G. Futch), and a secretary. The memo notes several changes in project officers had occurred, yet ATIC maintained up-to-date project records despite the turnover.\n\nA notable operational shift had taken place. ATIC was no longer conducting field investigations of UFOB sightings directly. Investigations were instead delegated to USAF intelligence officers stationed closer to sighting locations, drawn primarily from Air Defense Command (ADC) and Airways and Air Communications Service (AACS). ATIC confined its own work to receiving and checking submitted reports, requesting additional field investigation where needed, cross-checking sighting data against meteorological, astronomical, aircraft, and balloon records, and maintaining a cross-referenced filing system organized by date, location, source, type of observation, and conclusion. During roughly the year preceding the memo, approximately ten percent of reported sightings were classified as unsolved.\n\n### Transfer of Project Blue Book to Air Defense Command\n\nThe memorandum records a significant structural change in how the Air Force managed the UFOB project. Project Blue Book was in the process of being transferred from ATIC to Headquarters, Air Defense Command. The rationale, as explained by Lieutenant Colonel Harry Johnston, Chief of the Electronics Branch, was that ADC had been performing most of the investigative work in practice. Johnston stated that \"if it turns out that these things (UFOBs) are space ships or long range aircraft from another country, ADC is the (Air Force) Command that would have to take action.\" This operational logic made ADC the natural home for the project. The memo notes, however, that Johnston simultaneously asserted the transfer did not reflect any change in Air Force policy -- a qualification the CIA author appears to have found somewhat contradictory.\n\nADC's interceptor operations and its radar reporting network had already made it the command most directly engaged with UFOB activity in practice. Its reporting stations and communications systems were implicated in a considerable portion of incoming UFOB data.\n\n### Camera Procurement and the Photographic Documentation Program\n\nRoughly eighteen months before the memo's date, ATIC launched an initiative to place cameras at selected ADC radar sites and AACS control towers in areas with consistent UFOB sighting histories. The explicit purpose was to photograph UFOBs.\n\nThe technical specification included a specialized optical component: one lens of each camera -- a starscope C type -- was to be fitted with a diffraction grating capable of capturing the spectral character of any UFOB photographed. The procurement order covered one hundred \"Wideon\" 35 mm cameras equipped with \"stereon\" anastigmat f3.5 lenses, and one hundred diffraction gratings rated at 15,000 lines per unit, all purchased from CENCO (Central Scientific Company) of Chicago.\n\nSeventy-four cameras had been distributed to sites. The program ran into a technical problem: a significant number of the distributed gratings had degraded, with the grating material separating from the glass substrate. ATIC expected replacement gratings to arrive shortly and intended to recall all 74 cameras from sites for re-equipping. The memo documents an additional abandoned initiative: several months prior, ATIC had been advised of plans for a coordinated instrumentation observational effort in the Albuquerque area, a program that had subsequently been dropped without stated explanation.\n\n### Project STORK and Reporting Schedule\n\nProject STORK, classified SECRET, was preparing at ATIC's request a comprehensive statistical analysis of UFOB sightings spanning 1947 through 1952. The memo expected that study to be completed by 1 December 1953. ATIC issued tri-monthly status reports on Project Blue Book; the most recent available at the time of writing was Report No. 12, dated 30 September 1953.\n\n## Navy and Army Involvement\n\nDespite press coverage suggesting broader Navy interest, the memorandum records that the Navy was devoting only part-time attention of a single ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) analyst to maintaining awareness of UFOBs. The Army had demonstrated negligible independent interest, participating only by cooperating with Air Force reporting formats when relevant sightings occurred.\n\n## Foreign Government Activities\n\n### Canada\n\nCanadian activities were attracting notable U.S. press coverage at the time. Reports indicated that the Canadian Defence Research Board and the Department of Transport had jointly established an official laboratory for recording observable phenomena connected with UFOBs. The memo also notes that Donald E. Keyhoe had recently published \"Flying Saucers From Outer Space,\" in which he cited a Wilbur B. Smith of the Canadian Department of Transport as having conducted \"saucer\" investigations for three years before 1952 -- placing Smith's work as beginning around 1949. The CIA author found it curious that Smith's claimed investigations did not surface in press coverage until roughly four years after they reportedly began, speculating that the recent press attention may have been triggered by Keyhoe's book. Separately, reports had reached the CIA that A. V. Roe, Ltd., of Toronto was conducting experiments on a flying saucer design.\n\n### Great Britain\n\nThe memo contains a brief account of a conversation with an unnamed British official during a recent visit. The British representative stated that, starting from [REDACTED] information roughly two and one-half years prior, British activity in the UFOB area consisted entirely of filing reports as received by the RAF. The remainder of the British section is substantially redacted, obscuring further details of British policy and any conclusions reached.\n\n### Sweden and Other Countries\n\nNo further information was available on Swedish UFOB activities. Beyond scattered and dated reports of interest by private individuals in other countries, no significant foreign government activity was noted.\n\n## Results of the January 1953 OSI Panel Recommendations\n\nIn January 1953, CIA consultant panels had reviewed the UFOB problem and issued recommendations designed to reduce public alarm. The panels advised that UFOBs be \"stripped of special status and aura of mystery\" and that intelligence, training, and public education policies be developed to provide the public with clearer indicators of what might constitute genuinely hostile intent or action. The memo credits these recommendations with a measurable effect: \"the definite drop in the number of 'sightings' reported during 1953 over 1952 could be attributed to actions following these recommendations.\" That interpretation -- that reduced public reporting reflects the success of a desensitization effort rather than any change in the underlying phenomenon -- is the CIA author's framing, not an independently verified finding.\n\nThe memo simultaneously expresses concern that recent publications were exploiting official UFOB reports released by the Air Force. Two books were specifically cited: Keyhoe's \"Flying Saucers From Outer Space\" and \"Flying Saucers Have Landed\" by Leslie and Adamski. Both works argued that UFOBs were extraterrestrial in origin and drew on official reports as supporting evidence. The CIA author noted that the Leslie-Adamski volume was \"so nonsensical and obviously fraudulent that it may actually help calm down public reaction,\" while viewing Keyhoe's work as a more credible vehicle for extraterrestrial claims. The memo concludes that aside from the consultant recommendations, there were \"no other as yet apparent results\" of the desensitization policy.\n\n## What The Record Supports\n\nCIA-UAP-007 establishes that in December 1953, the CIA's role in UFOB matters was explicitly limited to monitoring other agencies and maintaining files -- not investigating phenomena. It documents that Project Blue Book was being transferred from ATIC to Air Defense Command, that a camera-and-diffraction-grating program to photograph UFOBs was operational but experiencing equipment problems, and that approximately ten percent of sightings investigated by ATIC in the preceding year remained unsolved.\n\nThe document does not assess the nature or origin of the phenomena reported. It does not identify any UFOB sightings as threats or as objects of non-human origin. The author's attribution of declining sighting numbers to a desensitization policy is an institutional judgment, not a scientific finding. The record is a bureaucratic status report -- a snapshot of how U.S. and allied governments were administratively managing an ongoing unresolved phenomenon, not a finding about what that phenomenon was.\n\n## References\n\n[^1]: [Department of War PURSUE page](https://www.war.gov/UFO/#release)\n[^2]: [Department of War PURSUE data file (uap-data.csv)](https://www.war.gov/Portals/1/Interactive/2026/UFO/uap-data.csv)\n[^3]: [CIA-UAP-007, Current Status of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) Project remote release asset](https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/061226/release_03/documents/CIA-UAP-007_Current_Status_of_Unidentified_Flying_Objects_UFO_Project.pdf)","readingTime":"9 min read"},"relatedRecords":[],"citation":{"canonicalUrl":"https://disclosdex.com/documents/2026-pursue-release-03-016-cia-uap-007-current-status-of-unidentified-flying-objects-ufo-project","title":"CIA-UAP-007: Current Status of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO) Project","publisher":"Disclosdex","retrievedFrom":"https://disclosdex.com/api/v1/documents/2026-pursue-release-03-016-cia-uap-007-current-status-of-unidentified-flying-objects-ufo-project","license":"CC-BY-4.0"}}