One Paragraph in a Soviet Missile Range Report - CIA Case C-11

This is a CIA Directorate of Operations intelligence information report on the Sary Shagan weapons testing range in the Kazakh S.S.R., covering roughly November 1972 to November 1973. Most of it is conventional intelligence: facilities and work areas, security fencing, the regional headquarters and a warhead checkout unit, warhead dimensions for the System-75 (SA-2) and the System-300/Aldan missile, and hearsay about laser experiments. Its own summary ends with the phrase "rumored laser research; and an unidentified aerial phenomenon."

The sighting occupies a single paragraph. "On one evening in late Summer 1973," while watching a televised sports competition between Canada and the USSR at Site 7, the source "stepped outside for some air" and saw "an unidentified sharp (bright) green circular object or mass in the sky," "situated west of the site at an angle of sighting of approximately 70 degrees."

"Within 10 to 15 seconds of observation, the green circle widened and within a brief period of time several green concentric circles formed around the mass. Within minutes the coloring disappeared." The report adds: "There was no sound, such as an explosion, associated with the phenomenon." "The altitude of the object was undeterminable" and the source "could not estimate the diameter." A field comment records that "Source had no opinion as to what this phenomenon was."

Two cautions. This is a raw report, stamped "THIS IS AN INFORMATION REPORT, NOT FINALLY EVALUATED INTELLIGENCE," and the source-evaluation block is withheld, so nothing here is a CIA finding. And although the same document repeats hearsay that "experiments involving laser weapons were being conducted" at the range using "powerful antennas," it never links that to the green rings - any such connection would be ours, not the document's. The file is also an excerpt: its pages are numbered 4 and 5, so earlier paragraphs are missing. The report is transcribed below.