The truth is out there alright, it seems, as the CIA has taken the rather unprecedented step of publishing a lot of its historic ‘X-Files’ online, seemingly to coincide with the relaunch of the iconic TV show.
Although Fox Mulder and Dana Scully were employees of the FBI, the CIA has historically been rather interested in the phenomenon of UFOs, it seems, cataloguing its very own ‘X-Files’.
While many today would simply dismiss the phenomenon as a misidentification of stargazing, natural phenomena or outright fabrications, the Cold War period in the US saw the authorities take the idea of UFOs rather seriously, fearing them to be experimental Soviet aircraft.
The US government even had official decades-long investigations into UFOs, as seen with Project Blue Book, which attempted to scientifically answer what the UFO sightings were, but this fizzled into nothing.
The reports are out there
But now, posting a catalogue of reports online, the CIA is asking the public to “take a peek into our ‘X-Files’”.
They’re not exactly new documents, mind you, with them all being part of a declassification made in 1978 on reports from around the globe during the late 1940s until the end of the 1950s.
Clearly taking the release of documents light-heartedly, the CIA release even charts 10 documents that Mulder and Scully would love to get their hands on, including a mysterious sighting over East Germany in 1950 and bizarre objects in the sky above a uranium mine in the Belgian Congo in 1952.
Whether you believe the truth is out there or not, they’re still some pretty interesting stories.
‘UFO’ over city image via Vladimir Postovit/Flickr