UFO FAQ: All That’s Left to Know About Roswell, Aliens, Whirling Discs, and Flying Saucers
Throwing Open the Doors: Blue Book
In January 2015, more than 130,000 pages of declassified documents related to Project Blue Book became available on the World Wide Web. Blue Book—set up by the U.S. Air Force in 1947 to investigate UFOs and terminated in 1969— had been declassified since the 1970s. The files had been transferred to microfilm, and were accessible. However, anyone interested in researching the files had to investigate them in person, at the Maxwell Air Force Base Air University Library, in Montgomery, Alabama; and, later, the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
After the millennium, an investigator calling him/herself Xtraeme turned the 130,000 microfilmed pages into jpeg files. The jpegs inspired a young TV- documentary producer named John Greenewald, who wanted to make Xtraeme’s work easily accessible. Greenewald is a devotee of the Freedom of Information Act, a law he vigorously leveraged in the late 1990s, while still a teenager. In 1996 he created The Black Vault, a Web site containing more than 1.3 million pages of formerly classified government papers. Greenewald is particularly fascinated by UFOs, and was excited by the work done by Xtraeme. Greenewald told Huffington Post reporter Lee Spiegel, “I figured out a computer script that would actually convert 130,000 essentially pictures into a little over 10,000 PDFs. . . . I was then able to program the Web site and ultimately create a search engine that dives into those 10,000 PDFs.” Greenewald’s Project Blue Book Collection can be searched by year or key word. At one’s fingertips, then, are records of 12,618 sightings investigated by the Air Force and other agencies during a period of more than twenty years.
A complementary Web site, Project Blue Book Archive, is maintained by Project 1947, the Archives for UFO Research, the Sign Historical Group (SHG), and the Fund for UFO Research (FUFOR). Like Greenewald’s site, the Project Blue Book Archive offers easy-search access. In addition, the site pursues the dissemination of documents held in private collections.
These valuable resources offer information on a scale that, to some, may be overwhelming. Preparation and judiciousness will help prepare users to interpret the documents wisely. The trove should encourage every UFO enthusiast—and skeptics, as well—to conduct independent research, look to the skies, and wonder.
Unidentified Fearsome Object? For seventy years, that’s how comic books and other entertainment media have typically treated UFOs. Well, fair enough, because that’s where the salable drama is, but a more encompassing approach reveals people, events, and science no less fascinating than “alien attack.” Space Adventures Presents U.F.O. No. 60, 1967. Art by Dick Giordano and Rocke Mastroserio