In July 1952, German Oscar Linke and his daughter Gabriella, 11, were traveling to their home in Hasselbach when Linke’s motorcycle tire blew out. Deciding to hoof it, the two were walking along when Gabriella pointed towards an object in the distance. Initially, Linke thought his daughter was pointing towards a young deer, but a closer investigation revealed something…otherworldly.
When they were about 40 m away from the site, Linke could make out two men in metallic clothing. One of the men had a lamp situated on the front of his body, which flickered periodically.
“I approached until I was only about 10 m from them,” Linke said. “I looked over a small fence and then I noticed a large object whose diameter I estimated to be between 13 and 15 m. It looked like a huge frying pan.”
Gabriella called out to her father. The two men jumped into “frying pan,” which fluoresced green and red. With an increasing hum, the object rose into the sky and whistled off into the distance.
“I had never heard the term ‘flying saucer’ before I escaped from the Soviet Zone into West Berlin. When I saw this object, I immediately though that it was a new Soviet military machine,” said Linke. “I confess that I was seized with fright because the Soviets do not want anyone to know about their work. Many persons have been restricted to their movements for many years in East Germany because they know too much.”
Linke’s story is one of many among the CIA’s archives regarding Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).
In 1978, the CIA declassified hundreds of documents regarding the agency’s investigations into UFOs. Most date from the 1940s and 1950s. Last month, the CIA highlighted 10 documents that “The X-Files” characters Agent Fox Mulder and Agent Dana Scully would find particularly interesting.
The documents have a weathered look to them. Black specks and lines dot the scanned pages, and the courier font only adds to the strangeness the words hold.
Linke’s story is listed among the five that Mulder would find interesting.
The more skeptical documents, including a 1953 panel on the “‘Unidentified Flying Objects’ problem,” are classified under documents that would be of interest to Scully.
The aforementioned document states, “No evidence is available to indicate any physical threat to the Security of the United States,” and “no evidence is available to indicate the existence or use of any as yet unknown (to us) fundamental scientific principles.”
However, it does note that UFOs are an indirect intelligence interest “as any knowledge about the innumerable unsolved mysteries of the universe are of intelligence interest.”
The remaining documents can be found here.
