Documents / FOIA release
This Defense Intelligence Agency release gathers Army and Air Force intelligence reports on unidentified flying objects from several countries. It contains translated Finnish Border Guard reports of glowing spheres and lights seen near the Soviet border, a Costa Rica sighting near Puntarenas, and Afghan news items from 1959 on bright objects over Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif and Kabul. Other reports describe objects over Kuldja in Sinkiang, China. A 1969 OSI report from Nakhon Phanom, Thailand concludes that a pilot's ground sighting was probably a religious procession carrying ceremonial drums.
“Sightings”44 pages
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION REPORT ## General Situation: a. The time of discovery was approximately several minutes after 1900 hours O July: The time of discovery over Hsin-chu was probably misquoted. b. The points of discovery spread all over Taiwan. d. With the exception of Tung-yin, no altitude was indicated. With the exception of I-lan and Kuan Kuang, no direction was indicated. (1) The unknown flying objects discovered over Taiwan spread between east longitude 120.1 and 121.7 (between Tung-yin and I-lan), between north latitude 22 and 26.2 (between Heng-ch'un and Tung-yin). They covered an area 460 kilometers from north to south and 160 kilometers from east to west. It is felt that there must have been a greater number spread over a wide area on the nearby sea and ocean that were not seen. On the basis of the extent of the area over which these objects were discovered, they could not have come from any weapon that had been fired from the ground. Although they fell over a wide area, their time of descent was very short. Therefore, it is felt that they had descended from a common starting point at a very high altitude. They dispersed further and further apart as they descended they could be seen with the naked eye as greater incandescence resulted from increased friction as they approached closer and closer to the earth through heavier atmospheric density. ## b. On the basis of the colors of these unknown flying objects: (1) The illuminated object must be made up of more than one substance. The light generated as a result of heat from friction was different due to differences in the degree of heat resistance and conductivity, and the difference in the smoothness of the surfaces of the disintegrated bodies during their lescent. (2) On the basis of the above statement, these unidentified flying objects were probably bodies-fallen satellites or second and third stage rockets that had entered orbits then disintegrated in the earth's atmosphere after they had either encountered a malfunction or had performed their ultimate mission. a. There are numberous unannounced American and Russian space satellites. It is possible that some of them may disintegrate in the earth's atmosphere. b. On July 9, the Kung Shang Joh Pao, Hong Kong, published the following report on its second page: "Washington, July 7 (AFP) The United States announced today that the 29 ton satellite that went into orbit on Tuesday (July 5) had broken into pieces in space on the same day." Therefore, it seems possible that the unidentifie flying objects discovered over Taiwan could be some of the broken pieces of the above mentioned 29 ton satellite: ## COMMENT: 1. The first four sightings list the observer as unknown. The last three sightings list officials (police, military) as observers. This is probably an indirect method to indicate source reliability of qualified vs unqualified rather than known vs unknown. 2. The 1800 time of sighting at Kuan-hsi may possibly be an even one hour error made either by the observer or by the people who prepared the study. The sightings
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FOIA release, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 140 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.