Now Online: Air Force UFO Files

John Greenewald's efforts pay off with website culled via Freedom of Info Act
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 19, 2015 1:21 PM CST
Guy Spent 20 Years Gathering Air Force UFO Files
The Cosmic UFO by Cloud b, which features moving projections of the northern lights, is demonstrated at the TTPM Holiday Showcase, in New York, Oct. 1, 2014.   (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

In the latest "one-stop shopping for conspiracy theorists" news, a "UFO enthusiast" has launched a site he says is the first complete, searchable database of the Air Force's declassified UFO files, the Air Force Times reports. John Greenewald has spent almost 20 years reaping the benefits of the Freedom of Information Act to amass 130,000 pages of Project Blue Book data on his Black Vault website. Project Blue Book, an Air Force effort from 1947 to 1969 at Ohio's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, investigated 12,618 strange sightings; Greenewald says he has also included files from the project's predecessors, Project Sign and Project Grudge. Although the National Archives has housed the UFO files on microfilm (and other sites have posted partial info), only Greenewald had the stamina to spend the time "collecting, programming, and converting" all of it into an out-of-this world database.

Project Blue Book was discontinued after it was determined that none of the UFOs posed a threat to national security, that there was never any evidence of "extraterrestrial vehicles," and that nothing that was witnessed was beyond the scope of modern-day technology, according to a National Archives info sheet. Roswell fans will be disappointed to hear there's nothing on the 1947 alien crash that some people say took place there, but Greenewald thinks the info he has put up will pique the curiosity of ET-hunters. "People have this fascination when it comes to UFOs. We can have our speculation that it's top secret, but we simply don't know," Greenewald tells the New York Daily News. (All those UFOs spotted in the '50s? It was just us, says the CIA.)

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