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November 22, 2008 6:12:56 AM CST

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Britain Opens X-Files Vault

Posted May 14, 08 11:23 AM CDT in Science & Health,  World 

(Newser) – Britain has released the first batch of secret files on reported UFO sightings, Reuters reports, and concluded that 90% are bogus. The Defense Ministry's Flying Saucer Working Party found that the other unexplained 10% posed no security threat. It has investigated some 11,000 reports dating back to the '50s that include tales of aliens in green overalls and a spaceman named Algar.

"Clearly some reports remain unexplained, but we have found no evidence that these phenomena represent a threat to national security and therefore cannot justify devoting resources to their investigation," said one official letter. Reports of sightings doubled after the 1977 release of Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Source Reuters

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Julie Shuster, director of the International UFO Museum and Research Center. Britain has opened part of its secret UFO files to researchers.   (AP Photo/Jake Schoellkopf)
A sketch made by a police officer after a sighting of an unidentified Flying Object in England in 1984.   (AP Photo/National Archives, HO)
George Filer is director of the Mutual UFO Network. Britain has opened part of its secret UFO archives to UFO researchers.   (KRT Photos)
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Great Britain • Ministry of Defence • Royal Air Force • UFOs • Close Encounters


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