Declassified CIA Broadcast Summaries: Soviet Media and the UFO Vocabulary, 1990

Declassified CIA Broadcast Summaries: Soviet Media and the UFO Vocabulary, 1990–1993

Twenty-eight declassified Foreign Broadcast Information Service products in the CIA collection hosted by The Black Vault show how open-source media monitoring handled flying-saucer vocabulary — and how much of the same material had no UFO content at all.

Published

September 21, 2026

Declassified

Date not listed

Source agency

The Black Vault (FOIA archive)

ciaufofoiauapburied1991catalogedfbis

Opening summary

Twenty-eight declassified Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) products, all cataloged within the CIA collection hosted by The Black Vault, sit along the same narrow thread: how open-source media monitoring handled subjects that brushed against the flying-saucer vocabulary — and, in several cases, how the same apparatus handled material with no UFO content at all.

The earliest is an FBIS Moscow Consolidated "Takeall" digest dated 21 Dec 1990, cataloged as CIA document C00174709 (AFSN TB2212120090C), whose Space/Science section includes a Soviet science program in which Boris Belitskiy answers listener questions about "circles in British fields" — crop circles — noting U.S. speculation they could be caused by winds, pranksters, or even UFOs, and commenting on changing Soviet attitudes toward UFOs with increasing scientific interest.

The second is an FBIS London "Takeall" consolidated message dated 7 June 1991, cataloged as CIA document C00174904 (pages 105-114 of 170), whose only anomalous entry is…

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All documents referenced are declassified FBIS products released through the CIA's declassification program and hosted by The Black Vault. The newly merged document, C00175465, is marked UNCLASSIFIED and approved for release. The footer references The Black Vault FOIA clearinghouse and John Greenewald Jr. The garbled footer text appears to be a Black Vault watermark and should not be treated as part of the original document content. Official source documents referenced in this article: - https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/ufos-the-central-intelligence-agency-cia-collection/

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