The Bundestag Building in Berlin (credit: Julian Herzog/Wikimedia Commons)

Germany is falling behind the curve within all major Western democracies when it comes to the release of official UFO files. While the United States, Great Britain, France, Canada, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Denmark, among other NATO countries, have declassified a substantial amount of official UFO documents, Germany has done no such thing, maintaining officially that no federal agencies have investigated UFOs.

Seal of the Deutsche Bundestag


I want to know facts and it bothers me that in France, England, USA, Canada, the citizens can see the UFO files, and I am not informed as a German from my German government. It is therefore such a glaring discrepancy…In France, a citizen is automatically informed by his government because the government provides the UFO files to the website of the space agency, so officially on the government side, anyone can view the documents free at home. I, as a German in Germany, must also send faxes, make phone calls, file a claim. This has a cost and stress, which I do not think is proper.

The plaintiff Frank Reitemeyer (right) in court. (credit: German Exopolitics)

The Court had to decide “if the right to official information under the Freedom of Information Act (German acronym IFG) also applies to the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag.” The defendant alleged it did not because it’s protected under intellectual property laws (copyright). The Court, however, didn’t buy this argument, stating that “the plaintiff did not intend to bring this [UFO] study into the market but simply wanted to read it.” The German Bundestag plans to appeal the decision at the Supreme Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg.

The 2009 Bundestag Study

Cover page of the secret German Bundestag UFO study (credit: German Exopolitics)

For years the German Federal Government has denied any knowledge of UFOs, and the only reason we know about this study is because a draft of it was leaked to Robert Fleischer, coordinator of Exopolitics Germany, and some excerpts were published in the German newspaper Welt Kompakt. It all started back in 2009 and Robert Fleischer explained its genesis in an interview with Andreas Müller, one of the editors of Cross-Aktuell.de, the coordinator of the German Exopolitics Initiative:

CDU member of the Bundestag Gita Connemann, who requested the UFO study. (credit: Gita Connemann website)

A freelance journalist and photographer from Lower Saxony, Thorsten Wachten called me one day. He was about to interview a member of the Bundestag, Gitta Connemann (CDU, Christian Democratic Union), and asked for reliable information on the UFO issue that he could address to the Congresswoman Connemann. I sent him our briefing document for journalists and some other documents. When Mr. Watchen presented the documents during the interview and then asked for her views, Mrs. Connemann had no immediate answer. She was amazed that there were so many [documents] on this subject with unknown facts, so she promised to instruct the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag with an elaboration on the subject, to find a suitable partner for Exopolitics Germany. Mrs. Connemann kept her word, and a few weeks later I received the draft, together with a nice cover letter.

The German Bundestag report is titled, “The search for extraterrestrial life and the implementation of UN Resolution A/33/426 on the observation of unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrial life forms.” This pertains obviously to the famous United Nations General Assembly Decision 33/426 of December 18, 1978, “Establishment of an agency or a department of the United Nations for undertaking, coordinating and disseminating the results of research into unidentified flying objects and related phenomena,” brought about by the initiative of then Prime Minister of Grenada, sir Eric Gairy, and discussed previously in this website. The Bundestag report analyzed the German response to this UN initiative as well as a historical discussion of whether or not there were official UFO investigations in the Federal Republic during the Cold War.

Robert Flesicher (left) with Frank Reitemeyer (credit: German Exopolitics)

The proceedings of the Berlin Court are highly significant for many reasons. It may force Germany to abandon its lone wolf policy of UFO denial and join the majority of other Western democracies in Europe, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand and release at least partially some of its UFO files. This is the argument that Robert Fleischer and his German Exopolitical movement is making. “It’s just unbelievable that Germany should not have any UFO files,” Fleischer told the German newspaper Express. “After all, already 19 countries worldwide have opened their secret archives.”

Moreover, thanks to the work of pioneer German ufologists like the well known author Michael Hesemann and Illobrand von Ludwiger of MUFON-CES, many German cases—some with military implications—have been already uncovered, although the official documentation is still missing. In his interview with Andreas Müller, Fleischer mentioned one particularly interesting case from 1976 investigated by von Ludwiger:

At that time, a civilian pilot in the cockpit of his Piper encountered in Diepholz (Lower Saxony) a large glowing ball. From this object came such a strong magnetic effect that the small plane began to spin around its own axis. The pilot was injured by flying objects and asked for military assistance. Shortly after, two F4 Phantoms pursued the object. After his arrival in Hanover, the pilot was received by Germans and Americans and subjected to a rigorous interrogation and forced to sign a confidentiality agreement. A subsequent investigation revealed the strong magnetization of the Piper, the compass had to be replaced.

Plenary session of the German Bundestag (credit: Kopp Online)

As for the copyright defense raised by the Scientific Service of the German Bundestag (German acronym WDBB), this is a particularly specious argument. The WDBB is not a private business but a government agency paid by the German taxpayer, including the plaintiff Frank Reitemeyer, and its research is made for the benefit of the members of the Bundestag (Parliament) who are elected by the German people to represent them. That this lame “intellectual property” argument could win in court under these circumstances is hard to believe, but the Supreme Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg will have the final word.

For more information in German you can check the aktuell.de website and the Exopolitik Deutschland site.

According to the Royal Society’s announcement, Professor Uta Frith FRS, Chair of the Royal Society library committee, stated, “The release of these papers opens a fascinating window on the history of scientific progress over the last few centuries and will be of interest to anybody who wants to understand how science has evolved since the days of the Royal Society’s foundation.” The society’s first publication appeared in 1665. Yes, you can read articles from 1665 in the archive.

The Royal Society’s website explains that the society is a “fellowship of the world’s most eminent scientists and is the oldest scientific academy in continuous existence.” The society was founded in 1660 and serves as the UK’s national academy of science. The Royal Society proudly identifies itself as the world’s oldest scientific publisher, and currently publishes nine peer-reviewed journals.

Stephen Hawking (credit: Telegraph)

Paul Davies (credit: ASU)

UFOs and extraterrestrials have been the topic of several papers published in the various Royal Society journals. One example is a study conducted by Dr. Stephen Hughes, an astrophysicist at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, in which he suggests ball lightning and meteor showers could explain some UFO sightings.

Cover of the January 2011 issue. (credit: The Royal Society)

Other examples of UFO/extraterrestrial-related content published by the Royal Society include a paper by Ted Peters titled “The implications of the discovery of extra-terrestrial life for religion,” a paper by Carl Sagan titled “The Recognition of Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” and a cynical article by Simon Conway Morris titled “Predicting what extra-terrestrials will be like: and preparing for the worst.”

And while these and other articles, like SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) pioneer Frank Drake’s article titled “The search for extra-terrestrial intelligence,” might interest you, be aware that not all of the Royal Society’s content is currently available for free. Only content that was published more than 70 years ago is freely available. Newer content still requires a fee to view. So while you’re certainly welcome to browse writings by Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Ben Franklin, you still have to pay for most of the articles about extraterrestrials and UFOs.

Nick Pope (image credit: www.nickpope.net)

Pope divulged an insiders look at the government’s game of misleading people. He revealed one tactic used to downplay UFO reports was to refer to witnesses as “UFO buffs” or “UFO spotters” to make them sound less credible. They additionally used terms like “little green men” in reports to make the sightings seem silly, which would hopefully reduce the chance of the media picking up the story.

When Pope was with the MoD, he too was required to go along with the policy of deception. He told the Huffington Post, “I believe in open government and freedom of information. I believe that the UFO phenomenon does raise important defense, national security and air safety issues, and if I helped kill any initiative on that, I’m deeply sorry.”

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Department of Defence has ”lost” its X-Files. The Herald reportedly sought to obtain files from the Department of Defence relating to UFOs via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request. But after two months of searching, the department was unable to locate the files. The Herald reports that the department’s FOI assistant director informed them that only one file could be located, and “the others had been destroyed.” Another UFO file showed up in the system, but again, the FOI assistant director informed the Herald that “the files could not be located and Headquarters Air Command formally advised that this file is deemed lost.”

Like in several other countries, Defence officials in Australia investigated and kept records on UFO sightings for decades. The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) was charged with investigating UFO, or UAS (unusual aerial sighting), reports. According to a department memo, “This function ceased in 1996 after consideration of the scientific record suggested that there was no compelling reason for the RAAF to continue to devote resources to the recording and investigation of UAS.” Department of Defence heads decided to stop taking UFO sighting reports in November of 2000, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Individuals who contact the Australian Department of Defence with UFO sighting reports are now referred to local police authorities. Similarly, officials from the New Zealand Defence Force announced in March of 2011 that they would no longer be taking UFO sighting reports, and that people with UFO sightings to report would be directed to local police.

Memo from Guy Hottel (credit: FBI)

One document that is getting attention from the media is a March 22, 1950 memo from Guy Hottel, a special agent in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, concerning flying saucers that was sent to the FBI’s director. As Fox News explained, the memo states, “An investigator for the Air Force stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico . . . They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots.” While this memo simply shows Hottel relaying details provided by a third party, it is still noteworthy that such details are present in an FBI memo.

Another UFO file contained in the FBI’s digitized documents relates to a UFO that exploded over Utah in 1949. The Daily Mail details the FBI cable that describes how “an army guard, a policeman and a highway patrol, who were all miles apart, each saw a UFO, which they said exploded over mountains near Logan, north of Salt Lake City.”

The FBI documents are available for browsing at http://vault.fbi.gov/

Sketch of a flying saucer from the UFO files (credit: New Zealand Defence Force)

The newly released files join the more than 2,000 pages of UFO files that were released back in December.

A lot has happened in the last year. We couldn’t include everything, because we were trying to keep the video to less than 15 minutes, but we packed in a lot. It is another demonstration of how active this field is on a regular basis.

Note: One book that is not in the video which I have written about quite a bit, and thoroughly enjoyed is A.D.: After Disclosure. In the frenzy to get everything ready for the conference somehow I left it out. However, there are other books I left out also. If you feel there is a story or book that I left out that you think needs attention, feel free to comment below so others can be aware.

This is the only known UFO photo taken during the Vietnam War. It was shot with an Electro-35 Yashica camera by an American serviceman traveling in the back of an army truck along a country road near Chu-Lei in March of 1967 (image credit: UFO Photo Archives/Wendelle Stevens).

The war was still a fresh and tragic memory when I came to this country in 1975. I met countless people who had either served themselves or had close relatives or friends who did. As I became interested in ufology from 1977 on, some of the first stories I heard were war-related. My friend John Miranda, who was the first to show me evidence for UFOs, heard first-hand an account from a co-worker in 1972: Andy (not his real name) had just served as an USAF Technical Sergeant in “what he described was the intelligence center in Thailand that coordinated the military aircraft flights over all of Vietnam. As he put it, ‘if there was a plane flying anywhere in S.E. Asia, this control center knew about it’.” It was probably the Nakhon Phanom Royal Thai Air Force Base, identified in FOIA documents discussed below.

Andy reported that “one day [probably in 1969] on multiple radars, they tracked an object traveling at 7,000 mph that repeatedly made right angle turns. They checked with the top commanders from Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines. All confirmed they had no aircraft flying in that area at the time. Of course, the folks in the intelligence center were warned never to speak of this event.” Miranda added that Andy was a sharp individual without tendency to exaggerate. “He knew exactly what he was telling me. And he had no reason to embellish the story.” Thus ended my first Vietnam UFO story. More were to follow.

More eyewitness accounts

Pete Mazzola (image credit: Antonio Huneeus)

The next sighting came from one of my mentors in the field, the late New York City Police detective Pete Mazzola. Pete, who passed away in 1987, had then formed a national organization called the SBI, for Scientific Bureau of Investigation. Pete served in Vietnam from 1965 until the end of that decade. Although I heard the story many times, I’d rather quote it from a 1982 article in a local NY paper, The News World, with the subtitle of, “Staten Is. researcher inspired by encounter in Vietnam War.” The author was journalist Hal McKenzie, who later became a UFO activist and author.

“There were several times, while on patrol in the jungle, that I had time to look up at the stars,” began Mazzola. “I saw more than a few unusual ‘shooting stars’ that maneuvered in a way no meteor could.” One incident left an indelible memory in the young soldier. Mazzola couldn’t remember the exact date, only that it was around 1966 or ’67. Mazzola’s patrol was pinned down in tall elephant grass when they saw something strange appear over the paddy fields and palm trees ahead. “I couldn’t believe what I saw,” continued Mazzola, “the other guys saw it too but afterwards were too shocked to talk much about it except to say, ‘What the hell was that?’” Mazzola’s job as Forward Observer for his platoon was to call in the coordinates of enemy positions to US Navy ships.

Mazzola heard the shells first from the south (the American warships positions) and “then the objects began to receive artillery rounds in the other direction, from the north [the Vietcong]. The shells never made the target. They all exploded short, we could see the black smoke puffs in the air.” The detective almost implied the UFO was doing something to explode the shells prematurely. The object continued to hover “silently, gracefully,” said Mazzola, and in less than five minutes “shot straight up in the air” and was gone.

I then discovered another interesting case, published in the July 1973 issue of NICAP’s UFO Investigator newsletter, and investigated by famous ufologist Raymond Fowler. It occurred at the South Vietnamese Nha Trang Base in June 1966, which housed over 40,000 troops, including 2000 American GIs. The witness, an enlisted soldier with Specialist 5 rank, recalled that soldiers had gathered to watch an outdoors movie projected with a diesel generator. They had watched the film for a while when the sky suddenly lit up with what they first thought were flares.

Nha Trang Air Force Base, 1968 (image credit: USAF)

“It came from the north and was moving from real slow to real fast,” the soldier told Fowler. Pilots on the base estimated the lights were about 25,000 feet high. “Then the panic broke loose,” continued the witness. “It [UFO] dropped right towards us and stopped dead still about 300 to 500 feet up. It made this little valley and the mountains around look like it was the middle of the day; it lit up everything. Then it went up and I mean up. It went straight up and completely out of sight in about 2-3 seconds. Everybody is still talking about it.”

The witness added that at the same time all the generators on the base stopped, everything went black, even the motors of planes ready to take off stopped. “There wasn’t a car, truck, plane or anything that ran for about four minutes,” said the soldier. So if his recollection is accurate, this was a massive CE-II with widespread EME (electromagnetic effect). “A whole plane load of big shots from Washington got here to investigate,” added the soldier.

Unfortunately, no documentary evidence or additional witnesses has emerged since 1973 to back-up the EME evidence. Did a UFO really trigger a big blackout at the Nha Trang Base with massive EME on all kinds of engines? It’s possible, but until we find a paper trail or additional witnesses, we can’t say for sure. However, there is an official paper trail for other UFO incidents during the Vietnam War. The first case on record comes from the final list of “Unknowns” in Project Blue Book, when Vietnam (and neighboring Cambodia and Laos) were still called French Indochina. “Case No. 1232” occurred on May 28, 1952, and was seen by “multiple witnesses” in Saigon. This was during the first Indochina War against the French colonial power, won by the Vietnamese in 1954.

UFOs or “Enemy Helicopters”?

Gen. George S. Brown (image credit: USAF)

Some of the documents and statements in the paper trail come from high-ranking sources. On October 16, 1973, the USAF Chief of Staff, General George S. Brown, gave a press conference in Illinois. The USAF had been out of the UFO business since 1970, but the saucers were back in the news. This was the week when the 1973 UFO flap peaked: the Governor of Ohio had reported a UFO sighting the day before, the Pascagoula abduction occurred on the 11th, and the Coyne helicopter-UFO encounter would take place two days later. So it wasn’t surprising that the press would ask General Brown’s opinion about UFOs. I have a copy of the official Pentagon transcript of Gen. Brown’s remarks and I even saw once the unedited footage of this conference at the CBS News Archives in New York. Instead of commenting on the recent wave of sightings sweeping across the nation, Gen. Brown’s attention was drawn back to Vietnam. These are his exact words:

“I don’t know whether this story has ever been told or not. They weren’t called UFOs. They were called enemy helicopters. And they were only seen at night and they were only seen in certain places. They were seen up around the DMZ [demilitarized zone] in the early summer of ’68. And this resulted in quite a little battle. And in the course of this, an Australian destroyer took a hit and we never found any enemy, we only found ourselves when this had all been sorted out. And this caused some shooting there, and there was no enemy at all involved but we always reacted. Always after dark. The same thing happened up at Pleiku in the Highlands in ‘69. and we found there that they had moved the radar in and the Army started to work and we finally got that radar out of there and then they quit worrying about their problem.”

The issue of UFOs fired at as “enemy helicopters” by both sides, in fact, was widely reported during certain periods of the war. One occurred in the middle of June 1968, between the 18th and the 23rd. We have in our archives a stack of newswire reports from the AP and Agence France-Press (AFP), published in South American newspapers (mostly Brazil and Chile). They call it the fog of war not for nothing. The affair was truly confusing, so let’s try to decipher it.

The first article, published on June 18, 1968, has the appropriate title of “Mysterious Aerial Craft Cause Problems in Vietnam.” The AP dispatch from Saigon quotes a military spokesman even blaming the recent sinking of a Swift boat to “an unidentified object and not by North Vietnamese coastal batteries,” as previously announced. A new explanation was given to the press when sightings by American forces continued on the DMZ: Soviet-made “Styx” missiles that could be fired from small boats. “Radar Sees ‘Things’ In Vietnam Skies” was the headline on June 20th. The article added that Phantom F-4 jets were scrambled, but confusion prevailed. An article two days later stated the radar Bogies could have been misinterpreted and scramble operations were suspended.

Newsweek reported about this whole affair on its July 1st issue. Correspondent Robert Stokes was present at the Dong Ha base when “thirteen sets of yellowish-white lights” were reported over the Ben Hai River. Jets were scrambled and one pilot reported downing an object. Reconnaissance aircraft were immediately sent, but only a burned spot was seen. The loss of the Swift boat was mentioned again, but this time the South Vietnamese government had a new theory: “friendly fire” from one of our own fighters.

FOIA DOD military intelligence reports

We’ve located only two detailed military intelligence reports among the thousands of UFO documents released by various agencies under the FOIA. The first DOD Intelligence Information Report, dated 26 Dec. 1968, deals with “Unidentified Flying Objects” in the “Laos/Thailand” border area. It was written by USAF Major Dale Fulton, the Air Attaché in Vientiane, capital of Laos. Besides the Vietnam War proper, there were other, secret engagements in the neighboring countries of Laos and Cambodia, and even Thailand had a communist insurgency for a while, although they were able to quash it.

Nakhom Phanom Air Force Base, Thailand (image credit: USAF)

Maj. Fulton’s report begins with a series of radar sightings on the early hours of Nov. 28, 1968 detected by the Thai military: The “Nakhon Phanom Command Post was informed they ‘definitely were not ghosts’.” A Knife-27 chopper was immediately dispatched to the area, but nothing was seen. A second chopper, Knife-28 was sent later without better results, but as it returned to its base the ground radar detected new Bogies. “Historically, November and early December have produced large number or radar returns, particularly on CGA scopes, from natural or cultural phenomena in Thailand,” wrote Maj. Fulton, adding that many small balloons were released “from fairs and religious celebrations.” More important to the military, the report concluded that “to date, there is no confirmed evidence that hostile aircraft or helicopters have penetrated Thai air space in support of insurgent or communist activities.” The enemy doesn’t have that kind of capabilities, particularly since “to infiltrate personnel or supplies” can be accomplished by “other methods [that] are cheaper, safer and less obvious.”

The second report, dated 6 Sept. 1969, is titled “Unknown Entity – Unidentified Object Thought to be Helicopter Observed Near Nakhon Phanom RTAFB.” It was prepared by Robert Kaehler of OSI (Office of Special Investigations), stationed at the same base. The report deals with a lot of familiar territory: Radar Bogies and aircraft scrambles; talk of hostile choppers and insurgents in the Laotian border area; balloons released with Thai religious festivals; etc. In fact, Kaehler writes that “radar and visual sightings of UFOs, such as that being checked out by the OV-10 pilot in this instance, are not a new phenomenon, particularly at night.” The officer concluded once again that, “evidence indicates that much of the Thai-Laotian border can be crossed at ground level without a great deal of difficulty, affording a far cheaper, safer and less obvious means of infiltration or exfiltration.”

Chart of location of sightings of UFOs/possible enemy helicopters in the Thailand-Laos border in August, 1969, attached to the Kaehler OSI report.

There must be many other similar reports lost away in Washington’s paper bureaucracy. While these reports offer exciting contents, the UFO sightings themselves were never properly explained. For obvious reasons, the US military’s main concern was the possibility that these objects could be hostile enemy craft. Further inquiries were suspended once this was discarded. Yet cases continued to be reported until the end of the American involvement in Indochina. On Sept. 29, 1972, as the war dragged on, the State Journal in Lansing, Michigan, published an AFP newswire report titled, “What Was UFO Over Hanoi?” The AFP correspondent in Hanoi, Jean Thoraval, wrote that “a mysterious object appeared in the clear blue sky over Hanoi Friday, attracting missile fire from the ground but apparently remaining motionless.”

Thoraval himself saw the object from the ground with binoculars. He described it as “spherical in shape and a luminous orange in color, and was clearly at a very high altitude.” North Vietnamese air defenses fired three surface-to-air missiles, which were unable to reach the target. The object remained in the same high spot for over one hour and 20 minutes, although towards the end “it appeared less bright than before.”

This case over Hanoi might have led to a spurious story, first published in a Russian newspaper in New York in the early 90s and then spread to many other publications in Russia. The story told of a similar UFO visit to Hanoi, except this time it was a silvery saucer. The Anti-Aircraft Defense Corps, equipped with a Soviet-manned “Cube” missile complex, fired at the UFO with no effect. The disc then turned around and shot “a fine, needle-like, light blue ray on one of the battalions which had fired the missiles,” killing some 200 people, including Soviet advisors. But this story turned out to be hoax, exposed by Anatoly Dokuchayev, a Russian military journalist, in the July 1993 issue of the Moscow journal Aura-Z.

Similarly, some American UFO magazines and newsletters published in the same period a number of fantastic tales with ETs during the Vietnam War. Since none of them were ever confirmed, we’ll skip the gory details, but we’ve reviewed sufficient credible data to show that something strange was indeed reported during that war. We urge readers who may have witnessed or heard first-hand stories about UFOs in Vietnam, to send them to Open Mind’s sightings submission page: http://www.openminds.tv/sightings/.

Download FOIA Defense Intelligence Agency reports:

DIA UFO Report, Laos/Thailand, 1968

DIA UFO Report, Thailand, 1969