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| The existence of UFOs may seem like the exclusive domain of science fiction, but as Representative John Moss of California laid the groundwork for legislation that eventually became the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in 1966, he didn’t |
By history.house.gov
6-13-2013 |
During the 1950s and 1960s, as the House held hearings and debated the scope of Moss’s legislation, the Special Government Information Subcommittee and the Foreign Operations and Government Subcommittee (FOGI) of the Committee on Government Operations, both of which were chaired by Moss, addressed a deceptively simple problem. Every year the federal government produced vast amounts of information. But of that mountain of data, the subcommittee needed to know what the government could (or should) release, as well as what federal officials should (or had) to restrict.
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A sample page from Project Blue Book depicting an alleged UFO sighting. |
The subcommittees fielded thousands of requests from the public, newspapers,
and other Members of Congress on every imaginable topic, from Amelia Earhart
to ballistic missiles to frozen foods. Of the organizations that contacted the
FOGI Subcommittee, two stand out: Flying Saucers International and the
National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. Surprising? Yes, but
consider this: In the decade before FOIA became law, the United States and the
Soviet Union spent an immense amount of money developing programs to send
defense technology and eventually people into outer space. By mid-century,
whatever existed beyond Earth’s atmosphere actually seemed within reach, and
the idea—the very possibility—that “unidentified flying objects” were zooming
around the galaxy captured the public imagination. Many people who believed in
UFOs were also convinced the Air Force knew about them too, and that the
military had kept their existence secret. Anxious Americans considered this a
major problem: What if the Russians somehow got access to extraterrestrial
technology and used it against the United States? And didn’t defense personnel
need confirmation that UFOs existed and the training to distinguish them from
planes and missiles so that accidental war with the Soviet Union might be
prevented?
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A sample page (2) from Project Blue Book depicting an alleged UFO sighting. |
UFOs were just one of hundreds of subjects Moss and his subcommittees investigated in all agencies and at all levels. But the Subcommittees never confirmed or denied the existence of UFOs; their purpose was to ensure that the public had the most information available to them.
Source: Records on flying saucers from the Special Subcommittee on Government Information, Committee on Government Operations, 86th Congress; Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233; National Archives, Washington, D.C.
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