The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the primary U.S. foreign-intelligence agency. In the vault, CIA appears as the document originator for two UAP records surfaced by pursue:
- 1955 Sen. Richard Russell Soviet-train sighting — partially-redacted CIA cable released as part of PURSUE Release 01 (src-npr-pursue-release-2026-05).
- 1973 sary-shagan Soviet-source UAP report — bright-green concentric-circle object at the Soviet missile-defense test range, surfaced via PURSUE Release 02 (src-pentagon-second-batch-ufo-release-2026-05).
- 1972 USSR concentric-green-circles sighting — per src-nbc-pursue-firsthand-encounters-2026-05, a CIA officer in the USSR watched a green circle widen into concentric circles after a Canada–USSR sports competition. NBC dates this to 1972; it may be the same record as, or distinct from, the 1973 sary-shagan report — both describe Soviet bright-green concentric-circle UAP.
CIA is one of the interagency participants in PURSUE alongside department-of-state, nasa, FBI, and the department-of-energy.
July 8, 2026: Director john-ratcliffe received a letter from Rep. eric-burlison demanding records on the 1996 varginha-incident, including flight, material-transfer, and coordination records with Brazilian authorities from January 14–28, 1996. The letter surfaces a prior private FOIA request (Ref. F-2023-00442) to which the CIA gave a January 10, 2025 neither-confirm-nor-deny response citing exemptions (b)(1) and (b)(3) — the vault’s first documented CIA Glomar response. (src-burlison-varginha-cia-fbi-records-2026-07)
PURSUE Release 03 added further CIA contributions: the 1952–53 Robertson Panel primary document (src-cbs-pursue-release-03-2026-06); a 1992 CIA confession that OXCART overflights accounted for more than half of late-1950s–1960s UFO reports; and the July 2008 Harare Airport report (src-loeb-pursue-release-03-2026-06).
Sources
- src-pentagon-second-batch-ufo-release-2026-05
- src-npr-pursue-release-2026-05
- src-nbc-pursue-firsthand-encounters-2026-05
- src-cbs-pursue-release-03-2026-06
- src-loeb-pursue-release-03-2026-06
- src-burlison-varginha-cia-fbi-records-2026-07 — Jul 8 2026: Burlison letter to Director Ratcliffe on Varginha records