Documents / Report
This October 1955 memorandum from Herbert Scoville Jr., Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence at the CIA, discusses a Prague dispatch reporting two flying saucers seen from a train in Russia. An interview with Mr. Efron, one of four observers, did not confirm several details, and Scoville found his testimony alone insufficient. The memo recalls the Robertson group's conclusion that U.S. sightings posed no security threat and describes a USAF-supported saucer-like aircraft project at Avro Aircraft Ltd. in Canada.
From the source:Release of 2026-07-10 Released with redactions. Sections 1 and 2 of this memorandum document a 1955 analysis of reports of “flying saucers” or “unconventional aircraft,” referencing the incident described in observer debriefings contained within CIA-UAP-D020. The memo summarizes the incident as consisting of two lights rising vertically, then passing above the observers. The memo contains caveating language that suggests the author concluded that the reports, as described, did not indicate the presence of an “unconventional aircraft.” Section 3 cites a previous finding by Dr. [Howard] Robertson (of the 1953 Robertson Panel) that “almost all the sightings […] represented no threat to the U.S.” Section 4 discusses the state of then-current research into “saucer-like aircraft” under Project “Y,” a contemporary joint U.S.-Canadian aerospace development program.
REFERRED TO RECEIVED RELEASED SEEN BY OFFICE SIGNATURE DATE TIME DATE TIME SIGNATURE AND OFFICE DATE OS1 18 Oct 55 11:50 18 Oct OS1/ASD 19 Oct 55 12:50 19 Oct 55 24 Oct 19 Oct 55 24
Report, from the pursue 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. 4 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.