CIA · CIA-UAP-003
The CIA's Admission That U-2 and OXCART Flights Caused Most UFO Reports (1954-1974)
This is the CIA History Staff's 1992 internal history "The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974," by Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach.
Key excerpts
“High-altitude testing of the U-2 soon led to an unexpected side effect, a tremendous increase in reports of unidentified flying objects (UFOs). (p. 72)”
“U-2 and later OXCART flights accounted for more than one-half of all UFO reports during the late 1950s and most of the 1960s! (p. 73)”
“This enabled the investigators to eliminate the majority of the UFO reports, although they could not reveal to the letter writers the true cause of the UFO sightings. (p. 73)”
Alternative hypotheses
The reconnaissance explanation is correct for the bulk of late-1950s and 1960s sightings
most probable).
The figure is somewhat overstated to retrospectively tidy the record
A residual fraction had other prosaic causes
balloons, meteors, radar artifacts) or remained unexplained.