Expected 1974 disclosure rumor

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Contents 5
Expected 1974 disclosure rumor
Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford Photo: David Hume Kennerly · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons
Date1974
TopicsCrashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic)
PeopleLeonard Stringfield, Gerald Ford
TestimonyShellenberger testimony, p. 78
Year1974 in UFO history
Timeline1974 on the UAP Timeline
Sources6

Expected 1974 disclosure rumor — A sergeant says a retired Army official told him crash and occupant information would soon be released.

In the mid-1970s, Leonard Stringfield heard from several sources, including an anonymous sergeant, that the U.S. government was about to announce that it had recovered crashed saucers and alien bodies. According to the sergeant, a retired Army official had told him the information would soon be released.

Some versions of the rumour said the announcement would come at the December 1974 meeting in Martinique between President Gerald Ford and French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing. Earlier in 1974, French defence minister Robert Galley had given a well-publicized radio interview acknowledging that France was studying UFOs, which fuelled speculation.

No such announcement came. The White House pool report of the Ford–Giscard meeting, held at the Ford Library, makes no mention of UFOs. The episode is one of many predicted "disclosures" that failed to happen, and Stringfield himself described his disappointment.

In the testimony

Illustration of wreckage at a crash site
Illustration: wreckage at a crash site. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.

The testimony cites: Retrievals of the Third Kind presented at MUFON 1978, Leon Stringfield, p153.

People and topics

Illustration of a government hearing
Illustration: a government hearing. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.
  • Leonard Stringfield — Former Air Force intelligence officer and NICAP researcher who collected anonymous crash-retrieval accounts from 1978 to 1994.
  • Gerald Ford — U.S. congressman and later president who called for UFO hearings in 1966.
  • Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.

On the Timeline

Illustration of a humanoid figure under a hovering craft
Illustration: a humanoid figure under a hovering craft. An artist's impression drawn for this site, not a photograph of the event.

See every 1974 event on the UAP Timeline →

References

Further reading

This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.

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