In January 1979, The New York Times reported that despite repeated, feverish denials, the CIA had indeed investigated the UFO phenomenon: "CIA Papers Detail UFO Surveillance" screamed the headline. The report is said to have so upset the then CIA director, Stansfield Turner, that he reportedly asked his staff: "Are we in UFOs?" The answer was yes - since the late 1940s, apparently. But exactly how, what, when, why and who remained layered in mystery, leaving grist for the conspiracy mill. But this year a raft of newly unclassified CIA documents revealed that the remote possibility of alien invasion elicited greater fear than the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack. More interesting still, the CIA documents show that despite decades of repeated public denials, behind the scenes there raged a series of inter-agency feuds that involved the highest levels of the US government. The subject of UFOs - and dabbling in psychological warfare techniques - not only focused the attention of the US government elite for 50 years, but of some of the greatest scientific and military minds of the era. Throughout the 1950s CIA files clearly document an explosion of activity by US intelligence and military bodies concerned with studying every possible implication for the US, and other Western democracies, of UFOs. The phenomenon, so adored by the cinematic world, was reflected in the CIA's fixations. Indeed, while highly educated CIA employees experimented by giving each other surprise LSD trips in 1953, there were others, in other parts of the agency, dealing with a flood of UFO reports.
But significantly, after a burst of intense scrutiny in the early '50s, the available documents effectively go cold. Why? The Kafkaesque explanation provided is that few files were kept because these would only confirm that the CIA was investigating UFOs. A 1995 CIA review stated: "There was no formal or official UFO project within the agency in the '80s, and agency officials purposely kept files on UFOs to a minimum to avoid creating records that might mislead the public if released.
