You can now download the entirety of the CIA’s UFO documents
Credit: Megan Hullander.
We face dark days that have left us wasting away in a ruin of our own making. Luckily, while you have been busy selfishly devoting your time to developing opinions about the virus that has plagued your species and the climate crisis on your planet, John Greenwald Jr. thought to look up.
Technically speaking, he has been looking up since the ‘80s. Greenwald is the founder of the Black Vault, the internet’s central source for declassified documents. His most recent acquisition is 2,780 pages of UFO-related documents. And you, despite your lack of contribution to the decades it took to uncover them, have access to download them.
“Around 20 years ago, I had fought for years to get additional UFO records released from the CIA,” Greenwald told Vice. “It was like pulling teeth! I went around and around with them to try and do so, finally achieving it. I received a large box, of a couple of thousand pages, and I had to scan them in one page at a time.”
Their release follows a COVID-19 relief bill that included an ultimatum of sorts: the Pentagon had six months to release all of its information pertaining to UFOs. The collection is supposedly the entirety of the CIA’s documents on this matter, but their swiftness leaves room for speculation. Greenwald is skeptical as there is no way to verify that claim.
The information itself is incredibly difficult to navigate. The CIA might be grossly outdated in technology, but that seems implausible not just because of the inherent purpose of the organization, but also because of their very savvy techno rebrand from earlier this year. More likely, it seems, there is something in those documents they don’t want us to find.
Fortunately, the breads you have been baking and the vlogs that even your mom doesn’t watch can wait. The information, however clunky it may be, is there, and you have the time to use it.
