User:Cullen328/Sandbox/Richard Hall

CIA involvement in UFO investigations
In 1964, "high level White House discussions on what to do if an alien intelligence was discovered in space" took place. As a result, CIA director John McCone initiated a review of the possibility that UFOs might represent a threat to the United States. CIA agents interviewed Richard Hall, who provided them with data about UFA sightings from NICAP's records.

In 1997, the CIA released a report called CIA's role in the study of U.F.O.'s 1947-90 by Gerald K. Haines, which admitted that the agency had routinely lied about the causes of UFO reports for decades, blaming the incidents on weather conditions such as "temperature inversions" or "ice crystals". Instead these sightings were of secret aircraft, such as the SR-71 or U-2 spy planes.

Pulitzer Prize winning science writer William J. Broad wrote about the release of the report in the New York Times, quoting Hall:


 * "It's very significant," said Richard Hall, chairman of the Fund for U.F.O. Research, a group in Washington. "Certainly they've lied about not having any interest in the subject. But I don't know of any other deception like this." John E. Pike, head of space policy at the Federation of American Scientists, also based in Washington, said the admission raised questions about other Federal cover-ups involving U.F.O.'s. "The flying-saucer community is definitely onto something," in charging that the military is hiding something, Mr. Pike said.

According to Broad, Pike and other aerospace experts accepted much of the government's explanation of the earlier deceptions, while Hall continued to believe that the government was covering up evidence of the extraterrestrial origins of UFOs.