Now that the stripped down Schumer amendment has been implemented, the National Archives and Record Administration may become the gate to disclosure of UFO related materials by the United States.
The NARA was created in 1939, and made independent in 1985, outside the purview of the executive branch. Currently, the National Archives holds 11,889,175,594 pages,just over 2% of them having been digitized. That number only represents 1 to 3 % of the entirety of the U.S. archives, as only the documents deemed important enough are preserved in NARA, including classified information.
Nominated by the President of the United States and confirmed by the Senate, this agency is headed by the Archivist of the U.S., Dr. Colleen Shogan. As stated by the Schumer amendment:
“Not later than 60 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Archivist shall commence establishment of a collection of unidentified anomalous phenomena, as such term is defined in section 1673(n)(8) of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022 (Public Law 117–81; 50 U.S.C. 3373), records in the National Archives, to be known as the ‘‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection’’.
NARA responded quickly, sending memos, updating its own page on UAP and UFOs accordingly, and creating another research page, as noted by journalist Andreas Müller
The list of UFOs related materials seems strangely unorganized for an archive.
First is an entire catalog.
Interestingly, the first section is a collection of documents spanning 20 years starting in 1948, from a well known organization: the Air Force Office of Special Investigation. A Counter intelligence arm of the USAF, the AFOSI has been rumored to be at the forefront of US classified investigation on UFOs, and was in charge of the investigation of Lue Elizondo that ultimately cleared him.
The second section refers to the Blue Book files, an Air Force investigation designed to look into UFOs. Are listed pictures, administrative files, artifacts, and reports.
The third section contains various files:
Case Files from the Air Intelligence Service Squadron
Air Intelligence reports
Information pertaining to the Roswell Investigation
A transcript of communications during Gemini VII
Information on the Japan Airlines flight 1628 encounter.
Next are documents from specific sources, including NASA, CIA, the U.S. Agency for Global Media, USAF and NARA, and the Ford administration.
The last part links to a series of articles by NARA itself on the subject. One of the articles explains why some of these files were chosen, mainly to answer hundreds of requests from “UFO enthusiasts”.
The new page, discovered by Andreas Müller, has a lot of the same information as the previous one. One notable difference is the presence of NASA archives showing images apparently from Paul Villa, whose authenticity is questionable. This raises the question of why NARA decided to highlight these documents... and how these images came to be in the NASA archive.
Going through the document listed is a cumbersome task. Documents without contact information, pictures showing dark shapes in the sky, sometimes authentic, sometimes fake, produced during the Blue Book era.
If that interface with the NARA is to be the gate used by the U.S. to disclose information related to UAP, it will require an army of historians to sort through the documents and hoaxes.
A memo sent by Laurence Brewer, Chief Records Officer, states:
The law also requires that by October 2024, each federal agency review, identify, and organize each UAP record in its custody for disclosure to the public and transmission to the National Archives.
We will need to know what records can be publicly disclosed and what records must be protected, in whole or in part.
NARA will provide further guidance and communications as we develop processes to identify records responsive to the Act as well as instructions for how to transfer responsive records to the National Archives.
With the Schumer amendment getting support back during the year, a new legislation coming up for next year, and the popularization and normalization of the topic by many interested parties, there is little doubt that growing interest will overload the NARA current interface, especially with the variety of sources they will collect information from.
Still, already available records at NARA seem under exploited, while they could provide governmental information. One could think of the testimony of J.D. Daniel Sheehan.
Daniel Sheehan has been at the forefront of the battle against the U.S. administration for decades now, participating in numerous, high-profile cases: the Pentagon Papers, the Watergate break-in, Black Panther 21, Wounded Knee, Three-Mile Island, and Iran-contra.
The Constitutionalist lawyer testified that former CIA director Bush refused to brief president-elect Carter on UFOs but recommended he ask the Congressional Research Service to work on it. Carter followed the advice and Marcia Smith, the head of the CRS, Science and Technology Division. Smith then contacted Sheehan to answer Carter’s question, namely: is there a relation between UAP and extraterrestrial intelligence?
After the Vatican denied the U.S. President access to this information, Daniel Sheehan requested access to the classified sections of project Blue Book. He was granted access and was able to check documents and microfilms. During this consultation, he discovered “Official United States Air Force photographs”, some taken “through gun sights” of “unquestioned UFOs” but also “another one of a crashed saucer on the ground”.
One could wonder if such an archive could be given to NARA and be part of the declassification process. Wouldn’t that be a smoking gun?
Translated from French by Guillaume Fournier Airaud
This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0