Sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects in Ladakh, Nepal, Sikkim and Bhutan

This CIA Information Report, written in 1968 and later pulled up in a 1974 computer search by the Air Force’s Foreign Technology Division, lists sightings of bright moving objects along the Himalayan frontier between 19 February and 25 March 1968. The source is blanked out. A news fragment clipped to the front mentions Edward Condon, then heading the Air Force-funded Colorado UFO study.

What the table lists

The core of the file is a table giving date, local time, area, direction of flight and a description for each report. On 19 February a long, thin, fast-moving object with red and green light was reported over north-east Nepal, bright enough to light up the ground, followed seconds later by a thunder-like sound; the same evening a light trailing from its tail was reported over north Sikkim, and the compiler judged that its direction matched the Nepal sighting. On 21 February a bluish, silent, high-speed object was reported over Thimphu, in Bhutan, possibly coming from the direction of Tibet. Entries for Ladakh describe a white light with two blasting sounds and a reddish light leaving white smoke, an object moving in a circle with a smoke trail, and a rocket-like object leaving a white-yellow trail.

The most striking entry, from north-west Nepal, describes a blazing object flashing on and off, followed by a thunder-like sound, and says a large metallic disc-shaped object was found in a crater near Pokhara, with parts of a similar object found elsewhere. No follow-up is given.

What it does not say

The table records what was reported, not what the objects were. Several entries – brilliant light, a trail, a delayed boom – are the kind of detail that also appears in reports of bright meteors and rocket launches, but the file itself does not evaluate them.