Flying Saucers as CIA Distractions

Former HQ of the United Fruit Company,
a front for PBSUCCESS, a CIA operation
facilitating a coup in 1950's Guatemala

A declassified 1954 CIA memo indicates undercover operatives in Guatemala were instructed to consider creating a sensational UFO-related story as a tactic to divert attention from Agency intervention in political affairs. Public awareness of CIA interest in manipulating the Guatemalan government peaked after the Agency was outed via the publication of a cover-blowing white paper. Strategies were subsequently identified that would best accomplish successfully ridiculing critics of the Agency and de-emphasizing the related accusations. Such strategies involved creating a bigger public stir than was set off by the white paper, including the fabrication of a "big human interest story, like flying saucers" or similar sensational topics.

A 2003 article titled, The CIA's Cover Has Been Blown? Just Make Up Something About U.F.O.'s, was published in The New York Times. It provides a summary of the circumstances and an overview of related declassified documents. The US Department of State Office of the Historian offers a well cited transcript of the specific memo, which read in part:

3. De-emphasis:

A. Attempt obtain bigger play for recent stories of WSBURNT refugees than for paper.

[...]

C. If possible, fabricate big human interest story, like flying saucers, birth sextuplets in remote area to take play away.  

Author and aerospace historian Curtis Peebles commented on the implications during an appearance on the double disk edition of Mirage Men, a film created by Mark Pilkington and company. Mr. Peebles suggested the circumstances are relevant in that they provide clear documentation of covert interests on behalf of an intelligence agency in manipulating public perception of the UFO phenomenon. 

James Carrion addressed similar circumstances in his recently released book, The Rosetta Deception. The former intelligence analyst made a convincing argument via authenticated documents and similar sources that the "ghost rockets" of the 1940's were part of a well calculated deception operation. Motives likely included increasing global dislike of the Soviet Union while simultaneously spreading confusion among adversaries trying to analyze the many - yet often sketchy - reports.

Wherever one may stand on the UFO phenomenon and its subcategories, there seems to be no getting around the relevance of the intelligence community. It has been deeply involved since the beginning of the modern UFO era.