French Agency Releases Ufo Files: Don't Start Serving The Crepes Just Yet!

CNES and Geipan placed over thirty years worth of UFO investigation materials online as of Thursday, March 22, 2007. CNES is the official French Space Agency and Geipan is an agency of the French National Police. Are the files a hot Smoking Gun, or just another order of cold French Fries?

CNES receives about fifty to one hundred UFO reports each year. The investigative process they use is convoluted and quite different from what most Americans would expect. Geipan apparently does most of the field work, prepares reports and passes everything on to CNES. Scientists and Engineers take a look at that data and prepare some sort of final report or appraisal of the matter in question.

Jacques Patenet, the aeronautical engineer who heads the office for the study of "non-identified aerospatial phenomena" has said that "the data that we are releasing doesn't demonstrate the presence of extraterrestrial beings. But it doesn't demonstrate the impossibility of such presence either. The questions remain open."

On the day of the announcement and press conference, CNES security was tight. While calling the release “a world first“ and glowing over his nation’s openness about the UFO subject, Patenet failed to explain the need "to screen out uninvited UFOlogists" as an explanation for the added security. This hardly provides evidence for anyone to believe the agency’s files represent a fair and unbias look at the phenomenon. However, compared to the actions of their American counterpart, this is like allowing people to walk into French Intelligence Headquarters and browse through their files.

Every time American UFO Researchers ask their own space agency for any information about astronaut encounters or unusual phenomenon encountered by space probes, NASA clams up and sends out the debunkers en force. Although many Astronauts have been forthcoming and very honest about what they have seen in space, the space agency always slams the door on them. More than a few have been hit right between the eyes by NASA which claims that the Astronaut statements were the results of space sickness, fatigue or depression. But before we give the French too big a pat on the back, let’s look at what’s being released.

The CNES-Geipan reports only represent what people have reported to the French Government as UFO sightings and encounters. This is in no way, shape or form a release of information that allows us to examine all that the French know about the phenomenon. Although the investigations have obviously been handled in a more competent and professional manner, this is really little more than a French version of the U.S. Project Blue Book Report.

We have seen these types of releases before over the past several decades. In each case, the information came from individual government agencies, not the government itself. I recall when everyone got all excited about the release of the KFB files on UFOs. I was unimpressed. That’s because I received official Russian News Articles and private newsletters published in countries once controlled by the Soviets for years before that release. These were sent to me by serious researchers in those countries who appreciated receiving materials from me.

Thanks to the efforts of Russian language students who donated their time, most of what I received was quickly translated and contained a huge amount of information about the UFO phenomenon in Russia and Eastern Europe. Ironically, I could not find a single incident mentioned in those articles and newsletters that matched any in the KGB information releases. I felt then and now that the information I received from those individuals was as good or better than most of what was released by the KGB.

In 1989 I had the opportunity to meet Marina Lavrentrevna Vasliyevna Popovich at a press event in New York City. Marina was a pilot in the Soviet Air Force, holder of thirteen world aviation records and a former Test Cosmonaut. She spoke of personal UFO encounters and those she had heard about from other pilots. While the information was fascinating, it was not anywhere near the best that her government had to offer about UFOs and Extra-Terrestrial Life. UFO Researchers would be wise to view the CNES-Geipan information in the same manner.

Like America, France is known for having two faces. Their public face, and the one they use for behind the scenes political posturing. A good example of this recently came to light when it a secret communication between France and Israel was leaked to the press. While publicly condemning Israel’s advance into Lebanon not long ago, the French Government secretly encouraged them to invade Syria and institute a regime change. The USA plays the same games.

During the 1990s, President Clinton announced that the government had allowed secret radiation tests on American Citizens. All he admitted was that small amounts of irradiated materials were released into population centers or planted on soldiers during military exercises. No one believes that was all of it and everyone already knew about military exercises held during and very close to atomic bomb tests. Clinton certainly did not make mention of how the CIA implanted tiny devices into the heads of U.S. and Canadian psychiatric patients for over twenty years without permission. Nor did he discuss any of the other government mind control or remote viewing projects which have left large numbers of victims in their wake.

Information releases like the latest from CNES and Geipan can only be helpful in terms of research and data, but no one should give France, Russia or any other nation credit for what should have been done all along. It would be a mistake to offer nations like these kudos for releasing bits and pieces of UFO and other paranormal research data when so much still remains secret.

You can view the CNES-Geipan website at http://www.cnes-geipan.fr/