Around 130,000 pages of UFO files from the cryptic Project Blue Book have been released onto a new searchable website. UFO enthusiast John Greenewald, the site’s creator, filed Freedom of Information Act requests for nearly two decades to collect the documents. While the records give researchers months of material to review, skeptics still aren’t satisfied.
John Greenewald’s collection, called the Black Vault , has about 12,600 UFO files in the database, according to USA Today , 701 are remain “unidentified.” Project Blue Book investigated strange sightings from 1947 to 1969.
Many of the reports have deteriorated, some to the point of being unreadable. Others tell stories of what investigators later claim were meteors, weather phenomenon and, in one case, a practical joke.
The records are bound to have a few choice stories, but the mostly banal reports seem to support the Air Force’s decision to end the project and stop investigating UFOs.
According to the National Archives , the Air Force released a statement in 1985 giving three reasons why the Blue Book Project was canceled.
“(1) No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security; (2) there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as “unidentified” represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge; and (3) there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as “unidentified” are extraterrestrial vehicles.”
Skeptics just don’t buy it, and many see holes in the government’s release. Among them is the website’s creator John Greenewald.
As he explained to the Daily Mail , what the government released is just the “tip of the iceberg with what the military and U.S. government is hiding behind the UFO phenomenon.”
Greenewald claims that other documents he’s received from the NSA and Defense Intelligence Agency contradict the idea that the released Blue Book files are “all that’s there.”
The most prominent missing file is for the 1947 UFO sighting in Roswell, New Mexico. UFO enthusiasts believe the government recovered a crashed alien spacecraft and whoever, or whatever, was onboard.
Other files do detail sightings around the Roswell area, which is now considered a “hotspot” for activity.
The Blue Book files were already available on microfilm at the National Archives. Greenewald claims that his database is the first time all of the UFO files are available on the internet as searchable PDFs.
If it serves no other purpose, the Black Vault database showcases what became a national fear in the 1950s, as Greenewald explained.
“The UFO phenomenon was a true fear. Is it an alien threat or a threat from the Soviets or recycled Nazi technology. It wasn’t too far off from the Pearl Harbor bombings.”
For those people who still believe that we have been visited, the UFO files released so far will not be enough.
[Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons]
