CIA Releases Their Own ‘X-Files’ to the Public for First Time

Playing off the recent revival of the Fox network’s seminal 1990’s series The X-Files, the CIA has released hundreds of documents detailing investigations into the possibility of alien life during the 1940’s and 1950s on the agency’s official blog. Furthering the tie-in, they’ve split the cases down the same believer and skeptic lines that the series used to delineate its main characters.

“To help navigate the vast amount of data contained in our FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] UFO collection, we’ve decided to highlight a few documents both skeptics and believers will find interesting,” said a statement on the government agency’s website. “You will find five documents we think ‘X-Files’ character Agent Mulder would love to use to try and persuade others of the existence of extraterrestrial activity. We also pulled five documents we think his skeptical partner, Agent Dana Scully, could use to prove there is a scientific explanation for UFO sightings.”

“The truth is out there; click on the links to find it,” the statement concludes.

If one is prone to be a believer like David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder, the site provides several cases detailing unexplained encounters with alien creatures. One such example revolves around a German sighting in 1952.

In the case, an eyewitness claimed he saw a flying saucer land, and two beings dressed in silver emerge from the ship. After the beings became aware of his presence, the witness claimed the beings reentered the ship, which then “began to rise slowly from the ground and rotate like a top.”

If you’re more like the skeptical Dana Scully, as played by Gillian Anderson, the site provides a report from an early 1950s scientific advisory panel that discussed UFOs. These documents provide numerous examples of flying saucers being caused by, among other things, military aircraft, birds, and light reflected from the sun.

The documents can be accessed on the CIA’s blog.

The X-Files starring Duchovny and Anderson originally ran from 1993 to 2002, with feature film spin-offs in 1998 and 2008. A six episode revival of the series with its original stars debuted on January 24 on Fox.