Astronauts and Cosmonauts

Cosmonaut Victor Afanasyev

          "It followed us during half of our orbit. We observed it on the light side, and when we entered the shadow side, it disappeared completely. It was an engineered structure, made from some type of metal, approximately 40 meters long with inner hulls. The object was narrow here and wider here, and inside there were openings. Some places had projections like small wings. The object stayed very close to us. We photographed it, and our photos showed it to be 23 to 28 meters away."
Afanasyev commenting on a UFO sighting that occurred while en route to the Solyut 6 space station in April of 1979.

Neil Armstrong

          "We have no proof, But if we extrapolate, based on the best information we have available to us, we have to come to the conclusion that ... other life probably exists out there and perhaps in many places..."
From a statement in October 1999.

Scott Carpenter

          "At no time, when the astronauts were in space were they alone: there was a constant surveillance by UFOs."
Carpenter photographed a UFO while in orbit on May 24, 1962. NASA still has not released the photograph.

Eugene Cernan

           "...I've been asked about UFOs and I've said publicly I thought they were somebody else, some other civilization."
Cernan commanded the Apollo 17 Mission-The quote is from a 1973 article in the Los Angeles Times.

Colonel L. Gordon Cooper

          "I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets which obviously are a little more technically advanced than we are here on Earth. I feel that we need to have a top level, coordinated program to scientifically collect and analyze data from all over the earth concerning any type of encounter, and to determine how best to interface with these visitors in a friendly fashion. We may first have to show them that we have learned to resolve our problems by peaceful means, rather than warfare, before we are accepted as fully qualified universal team members. This acceptance would have tremendous possibilities of advancing our world in all areas. Certainly then it would seem that the UN has a vested interest in handling this subject properly and expeditiously.
Cooper, addressing a UN panel discussion on UFOs and ETs in New York in 1985. The panel was chaired by then Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.
          "For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists and astronauts. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public."
Cooper testifying to a U.N. committee.
          "As far as I am concerned, there have been too many unexplained examples of UFO sightings around this Earth for us to rule out the possibilities that some form of life exists out there beyond our own world."
          "I know other astronauts share my feelings, and we know the government is sitting on hard evidence of UFOs!"
          "We thought they could have been Russian we regularly had MiG-15s overflying our base. We scrambled our Sabre jets to intercept and got to our ceiling of 45,000 feet . . . and they were still way above us traveling faster than we were. These vehicles were in formation like a fighter group, but they were metallic silver and saucer-shaped. Believe me, they weren't like any MiGs I'd seen before! They had to be UFOs."
Cooper said he first encountered UFOs as a military pilot in Germany in the early 1950s, when unidentified craft were spotted over an air base.
          "I had a camera crew filming the installation when they spotted a saucer. They filmed it as it flew overhead, then hovered, extended three legs as landing gear, and slowly came down to land on a dry lake bed! These guys were all pro cameramen, so the picture quality was very good. The camera crew managed to get within 20 or 30 yards of it,filming all the time. It was a classic saucer, shiny silver and smooth, about 30 feet across. It was pretty clear it was an alien craft. As they approached closer it took off." When his camera crew handed over the film, Cooper followed standard procedure and contacted Washington to report the UFO and "all heck broke loose," he said. "After a while a high-ranking officer said when the film was developed I was to put it in a pouch and send it to Washington. He didn't say anything about me not looking at the film. That's what I did when it came back from the lab and it was all there just like the camera crew reported." When the Air Force later started Operation Blue Book to collate UFO evidence and reports, Cooper says he mentioned the film evidence. "But the film was never found supposedly. Blue Book was strictly a cover-up anyway."
In 1957, Cooper was one of an elite band of test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base in California, in charge of several advanced projects, including the installation of a precision landing system.
"I had a good friend at Roswell, a fellow officer. He had to be careful about what he said. But it sure wasn't a weather balloon, like the Air Force cover story. He made it clear to me what crashed was a craft of alien origin, and members of the crew were recovered."
Cooper revealed he's convinced an alien craft crashed at Roswell, N. Mex., in 1947 and aliens were discovered in the wreckage.
           "It started in World War 2, when the government didn't want people to know about UFO reports in case they panicked," said Cooper. "They would have been fearful it was superior enemy technology that we had no defense against. Then it got worse in the Cold War for the same reason. So they told one untruth, they had to tell another to cover that one, then another, then another . . . it just snowballed. And right now I'm convinced a lot of very embarrassed government officials are sitting there in Washington trying to figure a way to bring the truth out. They know it's got to come out one day, and I'm sure it will. America has a right to know!"
A statement when asked why has the government kept its UFO secrets for so many years? Cooper was a Mercury 9 and Gemini-5 astronaut.

James McDivitt

          "At one stage we even thought it might be necessary to take evasive action to avoid a collision."
James McDivitt commenting on an orbital encounter he and Ed White had with a "weird object" with arm-like extensions which approached their capsule. Later in the flight they saw two similar objects over the Caribbean.

John Glen

          "I believe certain reports of flying saucers to be legitimate."

James Lovell

          "Mission Control, please be informed, there is a Santa Claus."
James Lovell was commander of the ill-fated Apollo-13 mission, made this transmission after coming around the far side of the moon on the Apollo-8 mission on or around Christmas in 1968 with Frank Borman and William Anders. Although it was Christmas time, this statement has caused considerable controversy as "Santa Claus" was apparently a codeword used to indicate a UFO or other unusual sighting.

Edgar D. Mitchell

          "We all know that UFOs are real. All we need to ask is where do they come from?"
From a statement in 1971
          "I've talked with people of stature-of military and government credentials and position-and heard their stories, and their desire to tell their stories openly to the public. And that got my attention very, very rapidly.... The first hand experiences of these credible witnesses that, now in advanced years are anxious to tell their story, we can't deny that, and the evidence points to the fact that Roswell was a real incident, and that indeed an alien craft did crash, and that material was recovered from that crash site."
          "The U.S. Government hasn't maintained secrecy regarding UFOs It's been leaking out all over the place. But the way it's been handled is by denial, by denying the truth of the documents that have leaked. By attempting to show them as fraudulent, as bogus of some sort. There has been a very large disinformation and misinformation effort around this whole area. And one must wonder, how better to hide something out in the open than just to say, 'It isn't there. You're deceiving yourself if you think this is true.' And yet, there it is right in front of you. So it's a disinformation effort that's concerning here, not the fact that they have kept the secret. They haven't kept it. It's been getting out into the public for fifty years or more."
          "I have been over the years very skeptical like many others. But in the last ten years or so, I have known the late Dr. Alan Hynek, who I highly admire. I know and currently work with Dr. Jacques Vallee. I've come to realize that the evidence is building up to make this a valid and researchable question. Further, because my personal motivation has always been to understand our universe better, and my own theoretical work has convinced me that life is everywhere in the universe that has been permitted to evolve, I consider this a very timely question... By becoming more involved with the serious research field, I've seen the evidence mount towards the truth of these matters. I rely upon the testimony of contacts that I have had - old timers - who were involved in official positions in government and intelligence and military over the last 50 years. We cannot say that today's government is really covering it up - I think that most of them don't know what is going on anymore than the public..."
From an interview with MSN 1998.
           "The evidence points to the fact that Roswell was a real incident and that indeed an alien craft did crash and that material was recovered from that crash site," says Mitchell, who became the sixth man on the moon in the Apollo 14 mission. Mitchell doesn't say he's seen a UFO. But he says he's met with high-ranking military officers who admitted involvement with alien technology and hardware.
Captain Mitchell was an Apollo 14 Astronaut.

Storey Musgrove

          "Statistically it's a certainty there are hugely advanced civilizations, intelligences, life forms out there. I believe they're so advanced they're even doing interstellar travel. I believe it's possible they even came here."

Dr. Brian O'leary

          "We have contact with alien cultures."

Donald Slayton

          "I was testing a P-51 fighter in Minneapolis when I spotted this object. I was at about 10,000 feet on a nice, bright, sunny afternoon. I thought the object was a kite, then I realized that no kite is gonna fly that high. As I got closer it looked like a weather balloon, gray and about three feet in diameter. But as soon as I got behind the darn thing it didn't look like a balloon anymore. It looked like a saucer, a disk. About the same time, I realized that it was suddenly going way from me-and there I was, running at about 300 miles per hour. I tracked it for a little way, and then all of a sudden the damn thing just took off.  It pulled about a 45 degree climbing turn and accelerated and just flat disappeared."
Donald Slayton, Mercury astronaut, in a 1951 interview.

Major Robert White

          "There ARE things out there! There absolutely is!"
White exclaiming over the radio about a UFO encounter taking place on a 58 mile high X-15 flight on July 17, 1962.
           "I have no idea what it could be. It was greyish in color and about thirty to forty feet away."
He later reported

Unidentified Cosmonauts

          Female Cosmonaut: "I'll take it and hold it with my right hand. Look out the peephole! I have it!" Male Cosmonaut: "There is something! If we do not get out the world will never know about this!" -From the final transmission of a pair of Cosmonauts whose scheduled seven-day mission was interrupted by a malfunction of unknown origins. This piece of conversation was recorded on February 24, 1961 while they were trying to repair the damage. The two Cosmonauts were never heard from again. UFO comments by the world's top military leaders
 

U. S. Government Witnesses

Harry G. Barnes
            “For six hours ... there were at least ten unidentifiable objects moving above Washington. They were not ordinary aircraft.
            Barnes was Senior Air Traffic Controller for the C.A.A. in 1952.

Lambros Callimahos
            “If 'they' discover you, it is an old but hardly invalid rule of thumb, 'they' are your technological superiors.”
            Callimahos was a National Security Analyst, 1968. 

Dr. H. Marshall Chadwell
            "Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitude and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major US defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles."
            Chadwell, former assistant director of the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence, in a December, 1952 memo to then-director of the CIA, General Walter B. Smith.

Albert M. Chop
            "I've been convinced for a long time that the flying saucers are real and interplanetary. In other words we are being watched by beings from outer space."
            Chop was deputy public relations director at NASA, and former US Air Force spokesman for Project Blue Book.

Allen Dulles
            “Maximum security exists concerning the subject of UFOs.”
            Dulles was CIA Director, 1955.

James V. Forrestal
            The truth was known by only a very few persons. Of the original group that were the first to learn, several committed suicide, the most prominent of which was Forrestal, who jumped to his death from a 16th story hospital window. Secretary Forrestal's records are sealed to this day.     
            Forrestal was Secretary of Defense

Roscoe Hillenkoetter
        ”Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense.”  
         From a public statement, 1960.
         "Unknown objects are operating under intelligent control... It is imperative that we learn where UFOs come from and what their purpose is... "
      From, "What The Admiral Knew: UFO, MJ-12 and R. Hillenkoetter," International UFO Reporter, Nov./Dec., 1986.
      "It is time for the truth to be brought out in open Congressional hearings. Behind the scenes high ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense."
       Statement in a NICAP news release, February 27, 1960.  Admiral Hillenkoetter was the first Director of the CIA, 1947-50. In 1957, he joined the Board of Governors of the National Investigations  

J. Edgar Hoover
       "I would do it [aid the Army Air Force in its investigations] but before agreeing to it we must insist upon full access to the discs recovered. For instance in the LA* case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination." 
       From a handwritten notation at the bottom of a now declassified memo. (asterisk added, see below) * -- "LA" in this case may refer to Los Alamos, where the first atomic bombs were developed. There is some coroboration for this in the newly released, but unofficial MJ-12 documents.
       "The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been requested to assist in the investigation of reported sightings of flying disks..."
       "[UFOs are] considered top secret by intelligence officers of both the Army and the Air Forces." 
       From a declassified 1949 FBI document from the San Antonio FBI office, to J. Edgar Hoover.
       "An investigator for the Air Force stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers. Approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall. Dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots."
        From a March 22, 1950 memo to J. Edgar Hoover from the Washington FBI Office, released in 1976 under the freedom of information act.  Hoover was Director of the FBI 

Victor Marchetti
       "We have, indeed, been contacted - perhaps even visited - by extraterrestrial beings, and the U.S. government, in collusion with the other national powers of the earth, is determined to keep this information from the general public.”
        "The purpose of the international conspiracy is to maintain a workable stability among the nations of the world and for them, in turn, to retain institutional control over their respective populations. Thus, for these governments to admit that there are beings from outer space... with mentalities and technological capabilities obviously far superior to ours, could, once fully perceived by the average person, erode the foundations of the earth's traditional power structure. Political and legal systems, religions, economic and social institutions could all soon become meaningless in the mind of the public. The national oligarchical establishments, even civilization as we now know it, could collapse into anarchy.”
        "Such extreme conclusions are not necessarily valid, but they probably accurately reflect the fears of the 'ruling classes' of the major nations, whose leaders (particularly those in the intelligence business) have always advocated excessive governmental secrecy as being necessary to preserve 'national security."
        Marchetti was a former CIA official:

Walter Bedell Smith
        "The Central Intelligence Agency has reviewed the current situation concerning unidentified flying objects which have created extensive speculation in the press and have been the subject of concern to Government organizations... Since 1947, approximately 2,000 official reports of sightings have been received and of these, about 20% are as yet unexplained.”
        "It is my view that this situation has possible implications for our national security which transcend the interests of a single service. A broader, coordinated effort should be initiated to develop a firm scientific understanding of the several phenomena which apparently are involved in these reports..."
        From a 1952 memorandum to the National Security Council.  Smith was Director of the CIA from 1950 to 1953.