Documents / FOIA release
This is a declaration by Delores M. Nelson, the CIA's Information and Privacy Coordinator, signed January 22, 2010. It was filed in support of the CIA's motion for summary judgment in Larry W. Bryant v. CIA, Civil Action No. 09-0940 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It covers Bryant's FOIA request about a 1987 FAA meeting on the November 17, 1986 Japan Air Lines Flight 1628 encounter over Alaska. It also covers later airborne UFO cases, the dispute over his fee category, and the CIA's searches. The CIA found no records of the meeting and three records from other agencies, which it referred to the State Department and NSA.
“CIA”15 pages
26 27. Approved for Release: 2025/06/10 C07083373 The CLA processed Plaintiffs request following the procedures set forth above. As noted above (‘][ 9), the CIA has previously searched for and released records relating to UFOs in response to FOIA requests and litigation. In addition, in 1993-94, at the direction of then Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) James Woolsey, the CIA conducted an Agency-wide search for and reviewed all CIA files relating to UFOs. This effort, conducted under the direction of the Executive Assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence (“DCI”) resulted in a further release of 1,757 pages, bringing the CIA’s release of documents relating to UFOs, that is, the “UFO package” to 2,779 pages. It should be noted that this search was Agency-wide and the intent of the review was to release as much information as possible, without compromising intelligence sources and methods. Thus, the subject of plaintiff’ s request—“a 1987 special meeting at FAA headquarters-...to discuss and evaluate certain official evidence of the intrusive UFO encounter experienced on Nov. 17, 1986...by a Japanese flight crew” over Alaska — falls squarely within the parameters of this search. In reviewing this case, it was the second prong of Plaintiff’s request that prompted the CIA to reopen the processing of his request, namely, the request for information “on all other similar cases of airborne UFO encounters reportedly occurring since Nov. 17, l986.” ‘As was explained to Plaintiff in CLA’s Sept. 30, 2008 letter, there is no CIA program to actively collect information on UFOs. However, the letter also acknowledged that occasionally we may receive reports of sightings of objects in the UFO category. Accordingly, a search was conducted by CIA for records concerning “similar cases of airborne UFO encounters” since November 17, 1986. In 12 . Approved for Release: 2025/06/10 C07083373 4 l 1 l \ 1 I I J l | 1 1
FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 17 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.