France’s space agency has released more than 100,000 UFO-related documents. The material, documenting sightings as far back as 1937, is now being uploaded in batches to the space agency’s Web site. From the International Herald Tribune:
The space agency, known by its French initials CNES, said it is making them public to draw the scientific community’s attention to unexplained cases and because their secrecy generated suspicions that officials were hiding something.
“There’s always this impression of plots, of secrets, of wanting to hide things,” (said Jacques Patenet, head of the space agency’s Group for Study and Information on Nonidentified Aerospace Phenomena.) “The great danger would be to leave the field open to sects and charlatans.”
He said many cases were unexplained lights in the sky. “Only 20 to 30” could be classified as “Objet Volant Non Identifie” – UFOs that appeared to be physical objects, leaving “marks on the ground, radar images,” he said…
Only 9 percent of France’s strange phenomena have been fully explained, the agency said. Experts found likely reasons for another 33 percent, and 30 percent could not be identified for lack of information.
Link to IHT article, Link to the overloaded CNES site (Thanks, Chris Courtney!)