Who abducted Australia’s x-files?
A Sydney Morning Herald investigation into the Australian government’s UFO files has raised more questions than it answered: The department spent two months searching its offices for files that would be captured by the Herald‘s FOI application, which sought a ”schedule of records held by the Department of Defence … which relate to unidentified flying ...
A Sydney Morning Herald investigation into the Australian government's UFO files has raised more questions than it answered:
A Sydney Morning Herald investigation into the Australian government’s UFO files has raised more questions than it answered:
The department spent two months searching its offices for files that would be captured by the Herald‘s FOI application, which sought a ”schedule of records held by the Department of Defence … which relate to unidentified flying objects”.
But in late May, the department’s FOI assistant director, Natalie Carpenter, delivered a reply that seemed almost designed to set online chat rooms alight with conspiracy chatter.
The only file Defence was able to locate was titled ”Report on UFOs/Strange Occurrences and Phenomena in Woomera”; the others had been destroyed.
”We also discovered one [other] file, which had not been destroyed but could not be located,” Ms Carpenter wrote.
”In an effort to retrieve this file our office conducted searches of the Defence Record Management System, National Archives Australia [Canberra], National Archives Australia [Chester Hill], Defence Archives Queanbeyan and Headquarters Air Command, RAAF Base Glenbrook.
”Despite searching these locations, the files could not be located and Headquarters Air Command formally advised that this file is deemed lost.”
Cue the X-Files theme song.
Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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