France makes 'X-Files' public
Agency puts UFO documents on the Internet
http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/311826,CST-NWS-france25.article
March 25, 2007
BY JOHN LEICESTER
PARIS -- The saucer-shaped object is said to have touched down in the south of France and then zoomed off. It left behind scorch marks and that haunting age-old question: Are we alone?
It's just one of the cases from France's secret ''X-Files'' -- about 100,000 documents on supposed UFOs and sightings of other unexplained phenomena that the French space agency is publishing (in French) at www.cnes.fr.
France is the first country to put its entire weird sightings archive online, said Jacques Patenet, who heads the space agency's UFO cell -- the Group for Study and Information on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena.
Their oldest recorded sighting dates from 1937, Patenet said. The first batch of archives went up on the agency's Web site this week, drawing a server-busting wave of traffic.
''The Web site exploded in two hours. We suspected that there was a certain amount of interest, but not to this extent,'' Patenet said.
The archive includes police and expert reports, witness sketches (some are childlike doodlings), maps, photos and video and audio recordings. In all, the archive has about 1,650 cases on record and about 6,000 witness accounts.
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 that their secrecy generated suspicions that officials were hiding something.
Agency puts UFO documents on the Internet
http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/311826,CST-NWS-france25.article
March 25, 2007
BY JOHN LEICESTER
PARIS -- The saucer-shaped object is said to have touched down in the south of France and then zoomed off. It left behind scorch marks and that haunting age-old question: Are we alone?
It's just one of the cases from France's secret ''X-Files'' -- about 100,000 documents on supposed UFOs and sightings of other unexplained phenomena that the French space agency is publishing (in French) at www.cnes.fr.
France is the first country to put its entire weird sightings archive online, said Jacques Patenet, who heads the space agency's UFO cell -- the Group for Study and Information on Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena.
Their oldest recorded sighting dates from 1937, Patenet said. The first batch of archives went up on the agency's Web site this week, drawing a server-busting wave of traffic.
''The Web site exploded in two hours. We suspected that there was a certain amount of interest, but not to this extent,'' Patenet said.
The archive includes police and expert reports, witness sketches (some are childlike doodlings), maps, photos and video and audio recordings. In all, the archive has about 1,650 cases on record and about 6,000 witness accounts.
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 that their secrecy generated suspicions that officials were hiding something.
