CIA-UAP-010, Bericht über Gespräche mit sowjetischen Wissenschaftlern zum Thema unidentifizierter Flugobjekte in der UdSSR

[PAGE 1] oe oe a oo a a oa fe ‘iy ie Re io aa to ag My fe Ww xe io fe Fl ae ae te ee a i ant a ais maaan a an Me i sf 43 [PAGE 2] CONTROLLED DISSEM Gr Oe Pw he De Bete PEA NO DISSE ABRC OAD 00-B-32 23490-67 A a experience of this effect Comment Kozyrev is a controversial figure in the Soviet scientific community as well as internationally Appar- ently one of his questionable observations the activity of the central peak in the lunar crater Alphonsus has turned out to be correct On the other hand it is really more accurate to say that this observation led to an intensive search for activity on the Moon that has produced some positive results There may be no connection between the two sete of data however At the Main Astronomical Observatory Kiev little interest is shown in the UFO question I.K Koval mentioned that he and several other as- tronomers had been out in the countryside one evening and had seen a curious reddish object flashing through the sky that they were convinced Was neither a satellite nor a meteorite However their immediate in- terpretation was that this object might have been a fragment of a satel- lite or rocket returniag from orbit burning up in the atmosphere Koval thought that UFO's had been seen in the USSR but he could not be specific as to locations and characteristics At the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory Crimea again little interest was shown One of the astronomers L.I Galkin was with the group men- tioned by Koval and confirmed the observation of a peculiar object He did not discuss the experience in detail but clearly had been struck by the possibility that the object might have been a saucer At the Astrophysical Institute Alma Ata there was considerabie interest The institute includes an Atmospheric Optics Section presided over by G.S Lifschitz However the initial discussion of the problem was with the director of the institue G.M Idlis He too had read Menzel's book but considered it an adequate treatment of the subject which he consequently felt was closed He indicated that no observations of UFO's had been made by his etaff and that they had received no reports of such observations However when the US scientist proceeded to indicate the results of McDonald's critical study of the problem Idlie readily con- ceded that there might be more to it and concluded by stating that it was clearly still an open question Another astronomer mentioned that in ths northern part of Kazakhstan there had been repeated sightings of ball lightning The University in Alma At had sent a team out to investigate and discovered that what wa being seen were reflections of automobile headlights from an inversion layer aa pilin Later a discussion was held with Lifschitz He was not very impressed with Menzel's book but was also not impressed with the significance of the phenomenon It is possible that some interest was kindled that might lead to additional investigetions A stellar spectroscopiet Dr wuu Kupo was also interested in this problem partly as an adjunct to her attempts to locate fragments from bolides Sha was eleo dissatisfied with Menzel's book and felt that there was definitely an opportunity for additional research The general feeliug one gets is that no official treatment of the UFO problem has been given in the USSR Instead people refer to the US work principally Menzei's book to demonstrate the absence of real scientific problems At the same time there is an almost universal awareness of the history and characteristics of the phenomenon often as- sociated with considerable interest The reault is that a demonstration of the inadequacy of US Official explanations coupled with some proof of the reality of the observations might excite entiusiesm more rapidly among Soviet astronomers than among their US counterparts who are more reo gang influenced by the officiul ridicule associated with UFO's in the US