For more than four years, a Wikileaks document within their “Global Intelligence Files” has sparked much controversy. This record, listed as being from the Department of State Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, held the title, “REPORT THAT UR DESTROYED SECRET US BASE ON MOON.” But, no digital copy could be downloaded, since an electronic version was not available. Now, two years after the first request was filed, The Black Vault was able to get the actual document released officially through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in its entirety.

Since this record was first posted in the Wikileaks database and discovered by those who peruse the site, much speculation has circulated about what it truly meant. However, now that it is revealed, it shows that it was simply a response letter to a 1979 inquiry by the then, House of Representatives member Samuel Devine.

Per the response letter sent to Devine, Douglas J. Bennett, Jr., Assistant Secretary for Congressional Relations with the State Department, had responded to Devine stating there was no truth the rumor the Soviet Union “destroyed a secret US base on the moon in 1977.” Clearly, Devine had received a letter from a constituent by the name of Ceyd Quentin Arbogast, who asked about what he referred to as the “Battle of the Harvest Moon.”

The Black Vault’s FOIA request was first sent to the State Department in 2019 (case F-2020-01231). After some time, it was then recommended it be filed to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) where the document was more likely to be held given the timeframe it was from. After a new case was filed (case #21-49400), it was found, reviewed, and released to The Black Vault in full on September 8, 2021.

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(The below image is high resolution. If you are having trouble reading, simply click on the image, or CLICK HERE to download.)

The post Mystery Behind Wikileaks and the “Secret US Base on Moon” Destroyed By the Soviet Union Solved first appeared on The Black Vault.

This article was written for the CIA Studies in Intelligence. The author was Benjamin B. Fischer.

In August of 2019, The Black Vault requested a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) request on this document, which was previously released, though was redacted in many parts. The MDR was responded to in March of 2020, and did reveal some new information never before revealed. That part was the following paragraph, speaking about a 1981 KGB ‘esimate’ that had a drastic change on how the Soviet Union viewed itself  when contrasting to previous estimates created in the 1970s. This was the newly revealed paragraph (the full document is below it):

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The 1983 War Scare in US-Soviet Relations, Undated (circa 1996) [14 Pages, 7.5MB]

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The post The 1983 War Scare in US-Soviet Relations, Undated (circa 1996) first appeared on The Black Vault.

The year 2019 was undoubtedly exciting for UFO enthusiasts. It brought news that the U.S. government and military takes UFOs, or what they now call Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP), seriously. As they are potentially a threat to military personnel, the U.S. Navy announced in May it had implemented guidelines for reporting and investigating UAP activity. They also divulged in September that three videos circulating throughout the mainstream media, are, in fact, unidentified objects. And in December, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) declassified a document to The Black Vault which unveiled details about a UFO encounter that has remained a mystery for more than forty years. The record represents yet another piece of evidence for an ongoing concern that not only are UAPs a potential threat; but that threat is global and has existed for decades.

The “Intelligence Information Report” was first released by the CIA in 1978, however most of it was redacted. The only legible portion was a paragraph detailing an encounter with a UFO.

“On one evening in late Summer 1973, Source observed an unidentified phenomenon at Site 7,” the intelligence report revealed. “While watching a sport competition between Canada and the USSR on television, he stepped outside for some air and observed an unidentified sharp (bright) green circular object or mass the sky. The object was situated West of the site at an angle of sighting of approximately 70 degrees.”

Although the witness could not determine the altitude of the object, they believed it was above cloud level. They also recounted that, “within 10 to 15 seconds of observation, the green circle widened and within a brief period of time several green concentric circles formed around the mass. Within minutes the coloring disappeared. There was no sound, such as an explosion, associated with the phenomenon.”

For forty-two years, all of the other pages and paragraphs in the intelligence report have remained secret, until now. Thanks to the result of a Mandatory Declassification Review (MDR) request filed by The Black Vault, additional details have been declassified that shed light on the incident.

It occurred at the Soviet operated Sary Shagan Weapons testing Range, located in what is now present-day Republic of Kazakhstan. It was here that during the 1970s, the Soviet Union was secretly launching experimental missiles, along with testing laser weapon systems utilizing powerful antennas.

The CIA intelligence document was crafted utilizing information from an unknown source. It outlined the types of weapons tested at the facility; locations of exactly where experimental weapons were stored and launched from; diagrams of buildings and housing units; and the report of “unidentified aerial phenomenon”.

According to experts, this mysterious encounter at a sensitive Russian weapons facility with a UAP is just one of many cases in the area.

“There has been ‘UFO’ activity around the area for decades,” says Paul Stonehill, author, lecturer, TV consultant and researcher of Russian and Eurasian paranormal phenomena. “USSR had taken UFO presence seriously since 1940s and established a special top-secret UFO/USO research program (academic/military) in 1978. But they are paying attention to the most sensitive UFO/USO presence areas (Arctic Russia; Russian Kuril Islands; Kamchatka, etc.). There is a new generation of highly educated, professional military scientists engaged in such research.”

The UFO encounter outlined in this CIA report also reinforces an ongoing issue that still plagues the U.S. military today. “There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years,” the U.S. Navy told The Black Vault in 2019. “For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the USAF take these reports very seriously and investigate each and every report.”

This same problem currently facing the U.S. Navy, is the same that tormented the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War.  And despite the U.S. denying interest in the UFO phenomena after the close of Project Blue Book in 1970, there are many intelligence records like this one, which outline the concern on a global scale. Stonehill added that, “the Soviets knew they were watched, and those at the top were aware that the ‘watchers’ were not Americans [or the]Chinese.”

Mr. Luis Elizondo, a former DOD employee who claims to have run a secret UFO investigation program for the Pentagon from 2010 – 2012, also echoes the threat potential behind the phenomena today. In fact, according to Elizondo, he quit his post because the DOD was not taking the threat seriously.

“In many instances, there seems to be a direct correlation the phenomena exhibits with respect to our nuclear and military capabilities. The Department must take seriously the many accounts by the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond next generation capabilities,” Elizondo said in his undated resignation letter. “Underestimating or ignoring these potential threats is not in the best interest of the Department no matter the level of political contention. There remains a vital need to ascertain capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation. For this reason, effective 4 October 2017, I humbly submit my resignation in hopes it will encourage you to ask hard questions: ‘who else knows?’, [‘]what are their capabilities’, and ‘why aren’t we spending more time and effort on the issue?’.”

It remains unclear exactly how serious the Pentagon currently takes the UAP threat. Although the Navy has gone on the record about their guidelines and the facts that their results will remain classified; others like the Air Force and the FAA have not followed suit as they are seemingly not interested in UFOs at all.

The CIA’s recent declassification shedding light on one more UFO mystery may just offer some hopefuls a glimmer of optimism that possibly in a few decades, we will know just a little bit more about whatever this phenomena is that could potentially threaten our skies, along with everything in it.

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CIA UFO Document Declassified Further Solidifies Threat Potential from Unknown Objects [14 Pages, 4.5MB]

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The post CIA UFO Document Declassified Further Solidifies Threat Potential from Unknown Objects first appeared on The Black Vault.

Document Excerpt:

“In his speech of 5 October, President Gorbachev announced numerous unilateral Soviet measures relating to strategic offensive arms in response to President Bush’s unilateral initiatives. Gorbachev stated that the Soviets would unilaterally reduce their number of accountable strategic warheads to 5,000 rather than the 6,000 provided for in START. Moreover, be said they would remove 503 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBMs), including 137 missiles with multiple, independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), from alert status. Gorbachev’s statement reflects reductions since the September 1990 START data exchange, and therefore includes some missiles that had already been deactivated.”

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 Gorbachev’s Response to the US Nuclear Initiative: Implications for Soviet Strategic Offensive Forces, 31 October 1991 [8 Pages, 1.4MB]

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/cia/MDREOM-2018-00328.pdf

The post Gorbachev’s Response to the US Nuclear Initiative: Implications for Soviet Strategic Offensive Forces, 31 October 1991 first appeared on The Black Vault.

The following documents were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They were requested in November of 2016, and finally released in April of 2018.

They profile the research done by the USSR on Artificial Intelligence in the mid 1960s.

Although this is considered one “document” by the CIA (as indicated by the MORI ID number on the top left of the pages), it does comprise of multiple records regarding USSR Artificial Intelligence research.

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 CIA Scientific Intelligence Reports on Artificial Intelligence Research in the USSR, September 1964 [68 Pages, 10.3MB]

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The post CIA Scientific Intelligence Reports on Artificial Intelligence Research in the USSR, September 1964 first appeared on The Black Vault.

The Martin and Mitchell Defection occurred in September 1960 when two U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) cryptologists, William Hamilton Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell, defected to the Soviet Union. A secret 1963 NSA study said that “Beyond any doubt, no other event has had, or is likely to have in the future, a greater impact on the Agency’s security program.”

Martin and Mitchell met while serving in the U.S. Navy in Japan in the early 1950s and both joined the NSA on the same day in 1957. They defected together to the Soviet Union in 1960, and at a Moscow press conference they revealed and denounced various U.S. policies, especially provocative incursions into the air space of other nations and spying on America’s own allies. Underscoring their apprehension of nuclear war, they said “we would attempt to crawl to the moon if we thought it would lessen the threat of an atomic war.”

Within days, citing a trusted source, Congressman Francis E. Walter, chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), said Martin and Mitchell were “sex deviates”, prompting sensational press coverage. U.S. officials at the National Security Council privately shared their assumption that the two were part of a traitorous homosexual network. Classified NSA investigations, on the other hand, determined the pair had “greatly inflated opinions concerning their intellectual attainments and talents” and had defected to satisfy social aspirations. The House Un-American Activities Committee publicly intimated its interpretation of the relationship between Martin and Mitchell as homosexual and that reading guided the Pentagon’s discussion of the defection for decades.

Below, you will find my research into this defection, and the declassified documents that have been released.

National Security Agency Documents

 NSA Declassified Documents, Released March 2015 [ 103 Pages, 49.5MB ] – The NSA is charging nearly $2,000 to complete their search for records relating to this incident. They used the 2 hours allotted to me for free, and sent me the first 100 pages that they found. This is that release. Any additional searching or releases, I will be required to pay the thousands of dollars.

The post Martin and Mitchell Defection to Soviet Union, September 1960 first appeared on The Black Vault.