NEW NSA DOCUMENT RELEASE - CAUS

Wed, 13 Nov 1996 11:36:18 +1100 (EST)
Source: John Stepkowski

Hi All,

The latest issue of CAUS's journal, _Just Cause_ recently arrived in the mailbox with news of a partial "breakthrough" in the 1980 CAUS vs NSA UFO records lawsuit. 240 pages - 54 directly related to the NSA lawsuit - have been released through the efforts of researcher, Richard Giordano.

And it only took 16 years.

Apart from details of Mr Giordano's near-Herculean efforts to obtain the NSA documents, _Just Cause_ contains news of "thousands of pages of UFO case material" recovered from the National Archives relating to the activities of the 4602nd Air Intelligence Service Squadron. The 4602nd AISS served as an investigative arm for Project Blue Book but their in-house records and a number of UFO reports weren't part of the Blue Book files. Credit to the recovery of this material goes to Jan Aldrich of PROJECT 1947.

For those who aren't already subscribers, send US$15 (or $20 for "foreign" subscribers) to:

CAUS
Box 176
Stoneham, Ma. 02180
USA

Appended are a few excerpts from the current _Just Cause_.

- John

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NEW NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY RELEASE

The National Security Agency (NSA) has released 240 pages of UFO records from their holdings. A few statistics are necessary here.

Fifty-four pages consisted of material relating to the 1980 lawsuit of CAUS vs NSA and associated publicity in newspapers and magazines, leaving 186 pages not directly related to the lawsuit and pre-dating 1980.

According to the NSA's 21-page top secret In Camera affidavit of October 1980, the one giving the NSA's reasons for withholding their UFO files in the original lawsuit, they had located a total of 239 documents, of which 79 had originated with other agencies. This left 160 NSA-originated documents withheld.

Not knowing how many pages constituted the 239, we can break down the new release as follows:

NSA - 104 pages (plus 54 pages of lawsuit data).
Army Intelligence - 7 pages.
Defense Intelligence Agency - 75 pages.

The best way to summarize this is to say that we now have 104 pages of the 160 documents the NSA said it had in 1980. And we have 82 pages of the 79 documents originating with other agencies. A few of these had been released in the original suit but much is new. So 16 years later an undetermined percentage of the goals of the CAUS suit against the NSA have been satisfied. An accurate percentage can't be given unless we have total page numbers from the NSA.

[...]

Small amounts of the 21-page affidavit used by the NSA during the CAUS lawsuit in 1980 that were previously censored have now been made public. They answer nothing about UFOs but much about the NSA's reasons for withholding. Some relate to an explanation of acronyms identifying sources of information. One discusses the fact that a "serious shortcoming" existed in the NSA's communications intelligence interception and reporting procedures. The UFO phenomena was chosen to illustrate the nature of this technical problem. Since open discussion of the problem would have compromised NSA's activities, the information was withheld. It was also explained by the author of the affidavit, Eugene Yeates, that if an employee of the agency advances a novel theory, apparently a reference to the use of the UFO phenomena to explain a technical issue, that making such information public might stifle the candor agency employees might exercise in problem-solving. The employee, it was thought, may suffer professionally if his/her theorizing in a brainstorming session is found to be wrong, and subsequently laid open to public scrutiny.

It is clear from the entire tenor of the affidavit's newly released portions that the overriding concern of the NSA's secrecy on UFOs was to protect sources and methods of monitoring electronic information. ...


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