Sci-Fi Channel Sues to get UFO documents declassified

AniThyng · Post by **AniThyng** » 2003-10-22 01:17pm

i'm pretty sure it's Roswell Army Air Field.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2003-10-22 02:18pm

What a fucking waste of court time.

True but the government has a hell of a lot of stuff related to UFOs that they are keeping from the public. I doubt they'll find tales of little green men landing in 1947 but they are hiding stuff. Whether it's test flights of top secret aircraft or what they are keeping a lot hidden.

Hey, let's just fucking declassify everything while we're at it, since every classified document would be something they're hiding from us.

Post by **Gandalf** » 2003-10-23 01:47am

Uraniun235 wrote:What a fucking waste of court time.

True but the government has a hell of a lot of stuff related to UFOs that they are keeping from the public. I doubt they'll find tales of little green men landing in 1947 but they are hiding stuff. Whether it's test flights of top secret aircraft or what they are keeping a lot hidden.
Hey, let's just fucking declassify everything while we're at it, since every classified document would be something they're hiding from us.

Don't you guys have a Freedom of Information Act?

Also, what is the period of time before a clasified document is made public? (I remembered something like this mentioned in JFK.)

Joe Momma · Post by **Joe Momma** » 2003-10-23 09:31am

Gandalf wrote:Also, what is the period of time before a clasified document is made public? (I remembered something like this mentioned in JFK.)

AFAICT, there's a standard 10-year period after which classification automatically expires unless A) a different time period was specified during the initial classification or B) a decision was made at the time of the expiration to extend the declassification for a longer period.

Though this webpage isn't specifically devoted to declassification per se, it does include links to many of the relevant government guidelines, including the FOIA.

- Joe Momma

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-10-23 10:00am

I thought the declassification limit was 50 years?

Joe Momma · Post by **Joe Momma** » 2003-10-23 10:26am

Admiral Valdemar wrote:I thought the declassification limit was 50 years?

It might be; I only gave the material a superficial reading. Given the droves of WWII material is being declassified in recent years, 50 years is probably an upper limit. That should be long enough that most classified items will no longer endanger national security or (probably more importantly in the government's view) cause any living parties/organizations horrific political embarrassment.

FWIW, I sometimes think a lot of items may remain classified longer than necessary/longer than legal limits simply because there's a huge backlog of material. I don't envy the secretarial guys having to move all the WWII shit to different filing cabinets, so to speak. In fact, IIRC when the UFOlogists started asking for certain documents under FOIA, they actually got a lot more than they asked for simply because the administrators found it easier to go through everything at once rather than examine items piecemeal for the next decade. Don't take my word for it though, since I can't remember the source. Maybe one of Martin Gardner's books such as Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, though AFAIK Philip Klass's books still remain the best skeptical take on UFOs.

BTW, I wholeheartedly recommend Klass's work since he actually went and looked up the relevant historical documentation and evidence pertaining to specific events in UFO lore such as Flight 19, the mystery of which turns out to have been wildly exaggerated, surprise, surprise.

-- Joe Momma

Aeolus · Post by **Aeolus** » 2003-10-25 04:49am

Darth Wong wrote:Obviously, if the military were testing something near civilian territory and things went wrong, they'd prefer to cover it up. It always amazes me how UFO crazies will invariably discard a simple and obvious explanation like that in favour of little green men.

I don't believe a UFO crashed. But they are covering something up. Probably bureacratic stupidity. But whatever it is after 40 years in Needs to be fully declasified

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-10-25 05:07am

Gandalf wrote:
Don't you guys have a Freedom of Information Act?

Yes

Also, what is the period of time before a clasified document is made public? (I remembered something like this mentioned in JFK.)

It depends on what the information is. Some stuff, like aircraft designs gets declassified as soon as its obsolete, other stuff may be kept secret for 10-50 years and there are something's which are indefinitely classified.

Course not much beats the British, they wont release documents related to the Crimean war. This solely to protect the reputation of some of the commanders and politicians involved.