Once-Classified UFO Files Now Searchable Online

[space otter]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/27/project-blue-book-online_n_6525732.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Once-Classified UFO Files Now Searchable Online

Lee Speigel Become a fan
lee.speigel@huffingtonpost.com


Posted:  01/27/2015 7:45 am EST    Updated:  01/27/2015 3:59 pm EST

The truth is out there ... well, a large portion of the truth, anyway.

Approximately 130,000 pages of files from an official 22-year Air Force UFO study, known as Project Blue Book, are finally available to the public for free online.

Project Blue Book began in 1947 under the name Project Sign. It evolved into Project Grudge, and then finally took the name Blue Book in 1952. After 22 years of official investigations of thousands of UFO reports, the project was terminated in 1969.

Of the 12,618 sightings considered under Blue Book, 701 have remained "unidentified" -- suggesting to UFO researchers the possibility that those incidents could have involved ETs, or extraterrestrials. Others will say that those incidents are purely inconclusive.

The final conclusions of Project Blue Book were:


1) No UFO reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security

2) There has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge

3) There has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" are extraterrestrial vehicles.



Retired Air Force Col. Robert Friend was the director of Project Blue Book from 1958 to 1963. Despite the fact that Blue Book was terminated in 1969, Friend told The Huffington Post in 2012 that he thought the UFO issue should have been turned over to scientists, who could best determine what was behind the more unusual reports.

"When I first took over the program, I wrote two staff studies, and in both instances, I recommended that [UFOs] be put into another agency which would give them full scientific investigations and analyses," Friend said.

"I think that anytime there's a possibility of scientific pay dirt from studying these phenomena that, yes, it would be much better if the government or some other agency was to take on these things and to pursue the scientific aspects of it," he added.

For many years, the declassified Project Blue Book documents resided on microfilm at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. (pictured below). If a person wanted to research those documents, it was necessary to travel to Washington, sit at a bulky microfilm projector and scan through many individual rolls of film to find what he or she was looking for -- a task this reporter performed many times during the 1970s and '80s.

Now, thanks to the efforts of individual researchers, anyone can peruse the huge volume of Project Blue Book files on his or her personal computer, and at no charge.

A person who goes by the nickname "Xtraeme" compiled the original 130,000 Blue Book files into JPEG images. Television producer and writer John Greenewald followed up on Xtraeme's results and converted the files from JPEG pages into searchable PDF files.

"After quite a while, I figured out a computer script that would actually convert 130,000 essentially pictures into a little over 10,000 PDFs," Greenewald told HuffPost. "It took two to three weeks of nonstop computer processing time. I was then able to program the website and ultimately create a search engine that dives into those 10,000 PDFs."

The resulting Project Blue Book Collection
http://projectbluebook.theblackvault.com/
lets anyone explore the thousands of original Air Force UFO files, and includes the option to search for things by year or by keyword.

Greenewald knows a thing or two about unearthing government and military files. Nearly 20 years ago, armed with Freedom of Information Act requests, he created The Black Vault,
http://www.theblackvault.com/
one of the world's largest compilations of government documents related to UFOs and conspiracies of all types. The Black Vault now consists of more than 1.4 million pages of information.

"The complete Blue Book files have never been available before with this much accessibility," Greenewald said. "The disclosure and declassification of Project Blue Book is not necessarily new, but the fact that there's a searchable database of it, where you can go in by decade and then see a listing of all the cities without having to go through any hassle of registering, or even paying -- that's the part that's new."

Watch this news report on the Project Blue Book Collection.



Greenewald, who's featured on the syndicated "Unsealed: Alien Files" series, cautions people not to assume or hope to find a paper trail in the Project Blue Book Collection that leads to declarations that UFOs are alien visitors.

"It's exciting that we can now go through and see the 22-year history of what the government and the military did to investigate the UFO phenomenon," he said. "If you're looking for a smoking gun, that's not necessarily going to be there in the sense that they're going to say aliens are here, they've been over our skies and here's an example. You're not going to find that."

One of the best-known and strongest UFO cases from the Blue Book files involved Lonnie Zamora, a reliable police officer who witnessed an unknown craft and two short beings in Socorro, New Mexico, on April 24, 1964.

While chasing a speeding car, Zamora heard a loud roar and saw a flame rising in the air. When he turned his attention to the commotion, thinking it had something to do with a nearby dynamite shack, he noticed a shiny object, which he first thought was an overturned car. Zamora quickly realized this was, in fact, an egg-shaped craft, with an odd, red-colored insignia and no doors or window. It was the size of an average car.

This is one of the sketches Zamora made for the original Blue Book files:
pic at link

He then observed two beings, who appeared to be dressed in overalls and seemed startled by Zamora's presence. The police officer heard a loud sound, saw a blue-colored flame underneath the craft, and finally saw it take off in a straight line for several miles.

This is a re-enactment of what Lonnie Zamora reported to local and Air Force officials
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-ts=1422411861&x-yt-cl=84924572&v=CgNVtByUZhw

Adding credibility to this case were other eyewitnesses at different locations, who also reported seeing the unusual craft in the sky. Plus, investigators -- including Air Force personnel, the FBI and Project Blue Book's scientific consultant, astronomer J. Allen Hynek -- thought that Zamora had, in fact, observed something they couldn't easily explain.

The investigation also yielded evidence in the form of landing marks and footprints, as well as scorched brush around the area where Zamora said the object was sitting on the ground. In the end, both the object and the two beings that Zamora described were deemed "unidentified."

Here's the original Project Blue Book case card that indicates a conclusion of "unidentified" as well as "unknown":
also at link
To check out the original Project Blue Book documents on the Zamora case, here are links for related photographs and for all the case files.
neither link works,,sigh

"What's interesting about this is you start going through the Blue Book documents and you realize just how serious the government and the military took these records," said Greenewald. "You might also start to question whether or not their label -- their definition and explanation -- of whatever these UFO cases were, you start to question whether or not they're right. They could say it's the planet Venus or swamp gas. Well, who's to say it was? Just because they say something is true, doesn't necessarily mean that it's actually true."

Project Blue Book ended in 1969, with the Air Force declaring there was nothing significant about UFOs that posed a threat to America's security or was worthy of any scientific investigation. And while those massive files were eventually declassified and are now easily accessible online, Greenewald suggested there's still more to the story of UFOs.

"When you use the Freedom of Information Act and see the documents that come from outside of the Blue Book system, past the 1969 closure of Blue Book, you look at those things and you realize there is a much bigger picture here -- UFOs are not explainable like they wanted to say. This is something very serious -- it's a big threat, and something that the government and military still take seriously, even to this day."

Echoing Greenewald's contention of an ongoing high-level interest in UFOs is former Air Force Col. Charles Halt, who has accused the U.S. government of a UFO coverup. Halt was one of numerous eyewitnesses to several UFO-related events in 1980 at dual military bases in the U.K. -- RAF Bentwaters and RAF Woodbridge -- in the Rendlesham Forest.

"I'm firmly convinced there's an agency and an effort to suppress," Halt told an audience in 2012 at the Smithsonian-affiliated National Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas.

"I've heard many people say that it's time for the government to appoint an agency to investigate. Folks, there is an agency, a very close-held, compartmentalized agency that's been investigating this for years, and there's a very active role played by many of our intelligence agencies that probably don't even know the details of what happens once they collect the data and forward it. It's kind of scary, isn't it?"

Indeed.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/27/project-blue-book-online_n_6525732.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

[ArMaP]

But not on the Blackvault, as it states: Due to situations out of my control, The Project Blue Book material is currently unavailable.

I didn't see those files, but I have seen the Blue Book files online on a different site, where they have been for some years.

[space otter]

ArMaP   could you provide a link?  if the ones below aren't what you have.. thanks


I was half asleep  when I posted that and didn't take the time to search for a link when I saw that the black vault was not available..grrrrrrrrrr..
must have been hit hard with heavy traffic  there are at least six different articles referencing it.

so here is what I have found this morning..


http://www.bluebookarchive.org/


   
  The Project Blue Book Archive provides researchers
  with free online access to over 50,000 official US
  Government documents relating to the UFO phenomenon.
  A search engine and various indices are also
  provided to modernize access to these documents.


Click to browse the Project Blue Book Archive      BROWSE THE ARCHIVE
     Currently 56323 pages on-line   
 

Click to search the Project Blue Book Archive      SEARCH THE ARCHIVE
     Based on OCR technology   
 

  Project News 

Blue Book Archive Now On Facebook
The Blue Book Archive is now listed on the ever popular Facebook. Stop by to read the latest news on the archive an related topics. 

Updated Blue Book Archive Now Online
The Blue Book Archive has been given a minor face lift and is now hosted in a high availability datacenter. Some features like the curation interface have been removed pending a more complete redesign.

Uncensored Blue Book Microfilm Released
Thanks to the efforts of FUFOR and the Blue Book Archive the first ten rolls of uncensored Project Blue Book microfilm are now available. Click here to learn more about this important new release. 
   
 

About the Archive 
Click for more information about the Project Blue Book Archive 
The Blue Book Archive provides a modern interface to documents relating to the U.S. government's investigation of UFO phenomena. 

Download Documents 
Click to download PDF format versions of Project Sign and Grudge Reports 1-12 and Project Blue Book Special Report 14 
Users can now download PDF format versions of Project Grudge Reports 1-12 and Project Blue Book Special Report 14.


....................................................


http://www.archives.gov/foia/ufos.html


Unidentified Flying Objects -
Project BLUE BOOK
General Information
Reference Report relating to Project BLUE BOOK
U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet on UFO'S and Project BLUE BOOK
Reference Report relating to Majestic 12 {MJ-12}
Information of the "Roswell Incident"

General Information

The United States Air Force retired to the custody of the National Archives its records on Project BLUE BOOK relating to the investigations of unidentified flying objects. Project BLUE BOOK has been declassified and the records are available for examination in our research room. The project closed in 1969 and we have no information on sightings after that date.

The National Archives has received numerous inquiries concerning documents identified as "MJ12" and "Briefing Document: Operation Majestic 12." We have made extensive searches among the records in our custody of the U.S. Air Force and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to identify these documents. The Truman and Eisenhower Libraries have also searched their holdings for any references to, or copies of, the documents. In addition, the records of the National Security Council (NSC) for the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations are in the custody of the National Archives. Searches were made of the indexes to the NSC's Policy Paper and Meeting Minute files under the subjects MJ-12, majestic, unidentified flying objects, UFO, flying saucers,extraterrestrial biological entities and Aquarius. These searches were all negative with the exception of a "Memorandum for General Twining, from Robert Cutler, Special Assistant to the President, Subject: "NCS/MJ-12 Special Studies Project" dated July 14, 1954. The memorandum, one page, refers to a briefing to take place on July 16. The memorandum does not identify MJ-12 or the purpose of the briefing.


Return to Electronic Reading Room


Project BLUE BOOK Reference Report

Textual records of Project BLUE BOOK (the documentation relating to investigations of unidentified flying objects), excluding names of people involved in the sightings, are now available for research in the National Archives Building. The records include approximately 2 cubic feet of unarranged project or administrative files, 37 cubic feet of case files in which individual sightings are arranged chronologically, and 3 cubic feet of records relating to the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), portions of which are arranged chronologically, by OSI district, and by overseas command. A cubic foot of records comprises about 2,000 pages. Finding aids for these records include a file list for the project files and an index to individual sightings, entered by date and location.

Access to BLUE BOOK textual records is by means of 94 rolls of 35mm microfilm (T-1206) in the National Archives Microfilm Reading Room. The first microfilm roll includes a list of contents for all of the rolls and the finding aids. Photographs scattered among the textual records have also been filmed separately on the last two rolls.

Motion picture film, sound recordings, and some still pictures are maintained by the Motion Picture & Sound & Video Branch (NNSM) and the Still Picture Branch (NNSP).




U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet Concerning UFO's and Project BLUE BOOK

The following is a copy of the US Air Force Fact Sheet distributed by Wright-Patterson AFB in January 1985.

United States Air Force
Public Affairs Division,
Wright-Patterson AFB,
Ohio 45433
UFOs & PROJECT BLUE BOOK
On December 17, 1969, the Secretary of the Air Force announced the termination of Project BLUE BOOK, the Air Force program for the investigation of UFOS.

go to link for a long read
http://www.archives.gov/foia/ufos.html



Majestic 12 or "MJ-12" Reference Report

The National Archives has received many requests for documentation and information about "Project MJ-12." Many of the inquiries concern a memorandum from Robert Cutler to Gen. Nathan Twining, dated July 14, 1954. This particular document poses problems for the following reasons:
also  long read at link




The "Roswell Incident"

The National Archives has been unable to locate any documentation among the Project BLUE BOOK records which discuss the 1947 incident in Roswell, New Mexico.

On September 8, 1994, the Secretary of the Air Force, Sheila E. Widnall, announced that the United States Air Force had completed its study to locate records that relate to the alleged 1947 UFO incident near Roswell, New Mexico. Pro-UFO researchers claim that an extraterrestrial spacecraft and its alien occupants were recovered near Roswell in July of 1947, and that this fact was kept from the public


Return to Electronic Reading Room
http://www.archives.gov/foia/ufos.html

[ArMaP]

ArMaP   could you provide a link?  if the ones below aren't what you have.. thanks

I don't know if the link will work, but it's from Fold3.com.

[zorgon]

Didn't Issac Koi have them?

I seem to recall a thread on ATS where I posted a lot of links to government files online for a long time  I was sure Issac had saved all of the Bluebook to his own site?

[space otter]

 and here he is

http://www.isaackoi.com/



Home  * Starter Pack * Best UFO Cases  * UFO History  * Alien Photos  * ufo timeline *  UFO Videos





Introduction to isaackoi.com


I am a barrister in England with an interest in various issues relating to "UFOs".  I write under a pseudonym because some clients and colleagues would probably roll on the floor with laughter at the thought of my spending time on these topics, even though my focus of my interest is actually on various sociological and psychological issues relating to UFOs and ufology.

I've previously helped make freely available online in a searchable format UFO documents from the FBI, from Canada (with the permission of the Canadian government) and Australia (with the permission of the Australian government) and New Zealand, plus helped make freely available in a searchable PDF format various out-of-print UFO publications (such as the newsletters of ufo skeptic Phil Klass, after getting relevant permissions).

I can be contacted at isaackoi@gmail.com.

I am currently constructing this website to give a more structured archive of my work in relation to UFOs. 





The main features of this website are:

(1) A "Free UFO Researcher Starter Pack" giving an outline of various resources online, including official documents, UFO books, podcasts  and other material

(2) Various articles relating to attempts to identify the "best" UFO cases. Ufologists regularly complain that skeptics fail to address the best UFO cases. On the other hand, skeptics frequently complain that "believers" refuse to nominate the best cases.This article considers some of those complaints.

(3) Material relating to the history of UFO incidents and related matters, including movies and books.

(4) For a bit of light relief, and to try to address the amount of nonsense written about them, I have included sections on some of the more popular photographs purportedly of "aliens" and online "UFO" videos.





I have previously posted various items online. Links to some of those items are given below.



As part of my effort to make FBI files relevant to ufology available as searchable PDF documents, I posted an item entitled "FBI: "discs recovered", Air Force "greatly concerned", "at a complete loss" + more memos".  I had previously written a fairly long item which focused on one particular FBI document which has repeatedly been "discovered" over the last few decades : "Debunked! The FBI alien bodies memo – A case study in the reinvention of the wheel".

I have also written items about official documents from the USA ("Massive UFO disclosure in USA : A challenge for ATS"), Canada ("Canadian disclosure: "UFO Found" and other documents/photos"), Australia ("Oz X-Files : "authenticated sighting", "appear to be inexplicable", USA "very interested"") and New Zealand ("New Zealand X-Files : Official "fib", superiors "mystified", + Kaikoura "whitewash"").   

I have a particular interest in making material available as searchable PDF documents which can be downloaded and searched on your local hard-drive. I have written about free software that can be used to efficiently search large collections of PDF documents, with the results being displayed in a manner that indicates the context within which a relevant search term appeared and always for very quick reviewing of the search results (see "FAST searching of major free online collections of UFO journals (or just browse/download them)"). 

In addition to collections of official documents, I have helped make freely available online various out-of-print UFO newsletters (after obtaining relevant permissions) - see, for example, my items "Phil Klass: "Skeptics UFO Newsletter" now online (large collection)", "UFO Brigantia newsletters (UK 1980s-1990s) - PDF archive now online (free)" and "PDF Archive: Info-Paranet "Newsletters" (1989-1993)").  When I can obtain relevant permissions, I have also made available other searchable PDFs including rare out-of-print UFO books (see, for example, "Valentich disappearance - rare book now online - "Melbourne Episode" by Dr Richard Haines (free)", "Free Download: "On Pilots and UFOs" by Dr Willy Smith", "Rare book by C B Scott Jones ("Aviary" member) now a free download") and PhD dissertations (see "Dr Who?? : UFO PhD dissertations - free online").

While my focus is on written material, I do sometimes stray into dealing with other resources e.g. helping Giuliano Marinkovic and Roderick B Dyke make available a large audio collection online : "Huge audio archive of UFO history - now online. Many rare recordings, collated by ufologist Wendy Connors".



I have also written various items on more specific topics, including "Dogon Alien "Mystery" Demystified".



Joomla SEF URLs by Artio

[ArMaP]

It looks like the guy behind the Blackvault is a complete ignorant about copyright and took the images from Fold3, and now is complaining about it.

[Amaterasu]

This is an email I got from The Black Vault:

The Black Vault's Statement on the Project Blue Book Files

January 29th, 2015 – It is with great frustration to announce, that Ancestry.com, and their subsidiary Fold3, has laid down a claim to copyright on the Project Blue Book material – which has long been labeled as "public domain" by the National Archives & Records Administration (NARA).   Ancestry.com is claiming ownership to the digital version of this material – despite me having records that Fold3 doesn't even have in their archive and I received under the FOIA starting back in 1996.  They simply claimed it was 100% theirs and I was forced to remove it.

Because of my attempt with properly crediting Fold3 with a DIRECT LINK to their site as partial credit for some of the material, they used that show of proper credit by me to issue a copyright claim under the Digital Copyright Millennium Act (DCMA). Anyone who knows anything about the law can attest; you are "guilty until proven innocent" so this was the beginning of the end. I never hid from Fold3 as a source, and even brought them up in some media interviews I did take part in, which were all cut out. No one cared about that part of the story – this new archive was what they wanted to report on because it was simple, straight forward, easy and free. And people loved it.

Based on an evidence-less claim I was forced to remove the entire site.  That's right, there was ZERO evidence submitted to my web hosting provider of ownership or copyright or license, but rather, they simply placed the accusation which is all it takes.

In good faith, I took the site down in hopes a compromise could be reached. They already had credit given on the front page of the site for some of the material, and that link alone resulted in a 12%+ increase in their entire statistics since they posted records in 2007, and my link multiplied their weekly hits by 10x, yes ten times, in only 5 days (statistics are posted on their page, so I am not guessing on those statistics but rather took notes). 

I stated there was much more information here than is cited to Fold3, but they didn't care.  I offered giving them a full 100% "share of voice" banner ad to advertise Fold3 (in addition to the link already driving them traffic), or to sell ads with no profit share to me, and they didn't care. I asked if they would work with me on any capacity, because CLEARLY interest was being generated by my audience (and obviously not by theirs) but they didn't care.

In the end – they offered I become a member of their affiliate program – and offer a link to them in exchange for a portion of sales generated. ie: You have to sign up with them, pay a membership, and they give me a percentage.  I quickly declined.

This is public record material, and it should remain so. To lay 'exclusive' claim to it in the digital world, when both sites (my site and theirs) offer it for free – is ludicrous and a waste of time and money for everyone.

But at the end of the day, I am proud to have brought attention to information that although has been available for quite some time – the public at large never knew it existed.  I will let Google Trends prove my point.  Here is the popularity of Project Blue Book, since 2005, and a graph relating to people searching for information on it.

[image of a high spike at the end when TBV first put the files up]

See that spike?  Yes, The Black Vault did that... and I am proud to be the one who caused such an uproar of interest by the public and the media (despite some erroneous facts in the reporting).

Did some media outlets misreport? Yes, and if this page was still up, there was a message on the front page setting the record straight.

But, call it corporate greed, a legal loophole, or a grey area in the copyright law, all of that is gone in the name of getting your personal information, and your credit card, by a corporation that has a wallet much thicker than mine. I'll let you decide what the right label is to put on this entire mess.

Does all of this upset you? Me too!  And I invite you to express your thoughts to Ancestry.com, Fold3, and anyone else you'd like to express your disappointment:

Fold3
355 South 520 West
Suite 250
Lindon, UT 84042
Ph 1-800-613-0181
support@fold3.com

Ancestry Inc. Corporate Headquarters
360 West 4800 North
Provo, UT 84604
Ph 801-705-7000
Fx 801-705-7001
support@ancestry.com 

In 18+ years, I've never seen anything like this, and it is a sad day for the world of public domain, public information, public record and the idea of "Freedom of Information".

I have vowed from day 1, never to fall into the pit of desire of placing a price tag on PUBLIC information. It's a shame I am very much alone in that belief.

Sincerely,

John Greenewald, Jr.
The Black Vault
http://www.theblackvault.com

Don't think They (Fold3, Ancestry) really have any "copyright" here...

[ArMaP]

Don't think They (Fold3, Ancestry) really have any "copyright" here...

They have, if they are the ones that scanned and processed the physical documents, as those documents are not originally in digital format.

[space otter]

ah one of those co-winki-dinks here..i just posted about ancestry and George Soros

seems it all works into  how to move the sheep around by what the public knows and can learn.. all edited for their purposes, of course..
but hey.. just my opinion here.. move along nothing to see 



Re: they know what you are doing

« Reply #529 on: January 20, 2015, 09:01:37 AM »
http://www.thelivingmoon.com/forum/index.php?topic=4534.525#msg109036


partial  text from above link

anywho that is all besides the point of just who is ancestry  dot com
with a little digging it sounds a lot like someone else I just profiled
here
http://www.thelivingmoon.com/forum/index.php?topic=7781.msg108879#msg108879




edit to add.. you remember that old saying about the winners writing history..
it's changed (imo) to those who edit  info influencing what we think by what we read
limiting our intell with a purpose in mind...don't have to burn the books anymore