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CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

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Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#81

Post by rl3 »

jimrandomh wrote: post #22

I'm surprised they're continuing the misdirection so many years later. "Unidentified flying object" means an aircraft, usually a military one (because civilian aircraft are easier to identify). A UFO over US soil would usually be a USAF plane, but the CIA ran (runs?) a reporting hotline because they might occasionally be foreign spy planes instead. But of course, the Soviets were very interested (or the US believed t…

>A UFO over US soil would usually be a USAF plane, but the CIA ran (runs?) a reporting hotline because they might occasionally be foreign spy planes instead.

The OXCART program (SR-71 predecessor) was a CIA program. This is probably one of the best pieces of journalism I've ever read on the topic:

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-mag-april052009-back...

While the entire article is good, paragraphs 5-8 are by far the best. The CIA literally drugged their own test pilot during debriefing.

>I'm pretty sure this is the result of a deliberate strategy: create a bunch of fake information, so that real information about US military capabilities will be harder to find. A few hints and a few taunts, and voila, every discussion about unidentified aircraft is guaranteed to have a schizophrenic walk in and start rambling about aliens!

I was actually just writing about this, except in context of aviation industry insiders perhaps misleading a respected industry journalist:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10971548

Entire thread for context:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10957365

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#83

Post by meagain20000 »

hyperpallium wrote: post #38
Jerry2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was a kid, I asked my grandfather, who was at that time an AF Colonel (he's now passed away), whether UFOs were real and whether he has seen aliens. He just looked at me, took me aside, and told me that UFO stories were propagated by the "boys from Langley" as a way to hide experimental aircraft testing. That way, every report of some black plane that was seen by the public, would be chalked up to UFOs and Rus…

Like carrots. The British promulgated the belief that carrots improve eyesight to explain the effective of their aircraft spotters, instead of radar.

You mean to tell me they are not?!! I remember reading that carrots have some nutrient necessary for good eye sight, beta-catorene I believe. I don't think it improves your current eye sight so much as it keeps it from going bad from a lack of it.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#84

Post by marshray »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #71
antidamage wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt the CIA were gaming Google in the 60s. It's also beyond ridiculous to think that a superpower like the USSR couldn't completely evaluate any material that came their way. The fake aircraft seems more reasonable though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamov_Ka-50#Development > The first two Ka-50 prototypes had false windows painted on them.[19] The "windows" evidently worked, as the first western reports of the…

don't overestimate Soviet competence. Soviet system was completely submersed in the sea of utter incompetence, with occasional pockets of competence here and there

It's more about "how can we waste their time" than it is about competence.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#85

Post by marshray »

spydum wrote: post #74
nathanm412 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a cashier when I was a teenager, I was told to ID and call in anyone with a check # under 500 with the assumption that low check numbers were less likely to be reliable. When I ordered my first book of checks a few years later, I started with # 1550 and was never bothered.

as recently as last year when opening another checking account, the bank clerk told me to start my check numbers at atleast 500 (you can specify when ordering checks). I asked her why, and that was also the same reason given. I laughed at the silliness of the idea, but took her advice anyways.

It's not completely silly: a check number under 500 is still highly likely to be a newish account. The test is cheap and has low false positives, so the fact that the it is easily subverted only diminishes its effectiveness but doesn't make it useless.

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#86

Post by T-hawk »

azernik wrote: post #73
sanoli wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's probably a lot of this going. Comes to mind right now the way the Navy had about two seal teams in the beginning, and then decided to name the next one 'Team 6', to make it look like they had more. I've read about other examples, but can't remember right now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_tank_problem

This actually hit my previous company in a software context.

We would number hotfixes sequentially. Customers would be notified when hotfixes were to be deployed to their sites. One savvy client noticed the hotfix numbering sequence and worked out both that we had a lot of hotfixes (tens per week) and that they didn't get them all right away (if you don't ask for it, it comes to you in the next quarterly trunk release.) Many awkward discussions ensued.

Solution: new policy to number hotfixes randomly instead of sequentially. Whoops, now sometimes hotfixes that had dependencies would get deployed in the wrong order.

Solution: also name hotfixes by date. Whoops, now the client can figure out that two weeks elapsed before they got the hotfix. (For all your usual enterprisey red-tapey risk-aversey reasons.)

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#87

Post by sanoli »

sanoli wrote: post #41
jimrandomh wrote: post #22

I'm surprised they're continuing the misdirection so many years later. "Unidentified flying object" means an aircraft, usually a military one (because civilian aircraft are easier to identify). A UFO over US soil would usually be a USAF plane, but the CIA ran (runs?) a reporting hotline because they might occasionally be foreign spy planes instead. But of course, the Soviets were very interested (or the US believed t…

There's probably a lot of this going. Comes to mind right now the way the Navy had about two seal teams in the beginning, and then decided to name the next one 'Team 6', to make it look like they had more. I've read about other examples, but can't remember right now.

Not the same thing but similar, a programmer wrote once how he made his software delay the answer to some user action to make it look like the program was hard at work. The process was actually very fast, almost instantaneous, so he added some message like " working - x seconds left ". Maybe it was on HN some years ago...

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#88

Post by robertfw »

meagain20000 wrote: post #83
hyperpallium wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like carrots. The British promulgated the belief that carrots improve eyesight to explain the effective of their aircraft spotters, instead of radar.

You mean to tell me they are not?!! I remember reading that carrots have some nutrient necessary for good eye sight, beta-catorene I believe. I don't think it improves your current eye sight so much as it keeps it from going bad from a lack of it.

it's got a grain of truth to it, so it's a believable smokescreen

Re: CIA declassifies hundreds of UFO documents

#89

Post by derefr »

legohead wrote: post #36
jonnyweirdteeth wrote: post #2

Good to see that the CIA has a little bit of a sense of humor about this kind of thing. What a PR coup by the X-files reboot, as well.

The CIA twitter feed [1] is pretty cool. This isn't them just taking advantage of X-files, their social media was already pretty good. [1] https://twitter.com/CIA

From this perennial-on-HN article (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-w...):

> At this time [the CIA], staffed mainly by Yale and Harvard graduates, many of whom collected art and wrote novels in their spare time, was a haven of liberalism when compared with a political world dominated by McCarthy or with J Edgar Hoover's FBI. If any official institution was in a position to celebrate the collection of Leninists, Trotskyites and heavy drinkers that made up the New York School, it was the CIA.

If that culture has persisted to any degree, then the CIA is probably the most "geeky" government department we've got, second only to perhaps NASA.

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