CIA press digest: saucers over Spain and North Africa, 1952
A CIA Foreign Documents Division digest collected Spanish and North African newspaper reports of 'flying saucers' from May and June 1952.
1952 CE · 36.75, 3.06 · status: official
The account
Report 00-W-23759, distributed on 27 August 1952, drew on España (Tangier), L'Echo d'Alger and the Journal d'Alger. The reports it summarises: - Barcelona, 21 May: a smoke-trailing object near Prat airport, seen by reporter Valentín García. - Sousse, 3 June: a green light. - Meknès, 7 June: an object whose speed two witnesses compared with T-33 jets. - Taourirt, 13 June: dock workers saw a disc of white flames for 30 seconds. - Casablanca, 15 June: seen by André Assorin, a former pilot; the local Meteorological Bureau said it had seen nothing. A second digest covered Dakar, Oran, Corsica and Gaillac later that year. These digests show the CIA tracking the 1952 wave abroad through open sources.
The sceptical view
Every item is marked 'unevaluated information' and comes from newspapers; the Agency did not investigate them.
Connections in the atlas
- The Dakar dawn 'saucer'
- Fedala blue-green ball
- Gaillac formation and 'glass wool' fall
- The CIA's 1952 flying-saucer study (Chadwell memos)