Coverup
     WASHINGTON (Aug 3) - With growing hysteria over alleged UFO
 sightings in the 1950s, the Air Force repeatedly concocted false
 cover stories to hide the fact that their super-secret spy planes
 had been spotted, an intelligence study says.
     Historian Gerald K. Haines writes that the Air Force, respond-
 ing to alleged UFO sightings during the Cold War years, frequently
 provided explanations that were untrue to deflect attention away
 from the spy planes.
     "Over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the
 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely
 the U-2) over the United States," Haines wrote in the spring issue
 of Studies of Intelligence, an unclassified CIA journal.
     The article was found Saturday on the Internet. Haines' study,
 "CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90," is available on the
 Internet at http://www.odci.gov/csi/studies/97unclas/
     Concern about the public finding out about the secret spy planes
 "led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to
 the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraor-
 dinarily sensitive national security project," Haines wrote.
     "While perhaps justified, this deception added fuel to the later
 conspiracy theories and the coverup controversy..." regarding the
 existence of UFOs, he added.
     Haines, a historian at the National Reconnaissance Office, based
 his article on a review of CIA documents from the late 1940s to
 1990.
     He described how the Air Force sought to deflect attention from
 the development of its high-altitude experimental aircraft, the U-2
 and the SR-71.
     The early U-2s were silver and reflected the sun's rays, espe-
 cially at sunrise and sunset, and often appeared as fiery objects to
 people below, Haines said. The U-2s were later painted black.
     Air Force investigators "aware of the secret U-2 flights tried
 to explain away such sightings by linking them to natural phenomena
 such as ice crystals and temperature inversions," Haines wrote.
     By 1956, the Air Force internally had clear explanations for 96
 percent of all UFO sightings, Haines wrote, referring to the experi-
 mental aircraft. "They were careful, however, not to reveal the true
 cause of the sighting to the public."
     He also said the CIA, during the height of the Cold War, hid its
 involvement in studies into UFO sightings because the agency was
 concerned if word came out it would lead to a national hysteria that
 could be exploited by the Soviet Union.
     The director of space policy at the Washington-based Federation
 of American Scientists, John E. Pike, said the study raises questions
 about other possible government coverups involving unidentified fly-
 ing objects.
     "The flying-saucer community is definitely onto something," in
 accusing the military of hiding something, Pike told The New York
 Times, which reported on the study in Sunday's edition.
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