NORAD's $294,157 search fee
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date | September 1979 |
|---|---|
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 89 |
| Year | 1979 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1979 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 7 |
In the late 1970s civilian researchers asked the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) for its records of unidentified objects detected by its space tracking network. NORAD replied that it held no UFO records as such, and quoted a fee in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to compile the data, effectively ending the request.[1]
The denial
In a letter of 11 August 1978, NORAD's Aerospace Defense Command told researcher Robert Todd that NORAD had no record of or relating to unidentified flying objects tracked by the Naval Space Surveillance System. It said the Freedom of Information Act covered only records that already existed, and that creating such a record would take about 340 hours of computer time and 400 man-hours. It added that about 25,000 observations reached NORAD's Space Defense Center each day, and that some 10 million uncorrelated observations had accumulated over twenty years.[1]
The fee
On 28 September 1978 Colonel Robert N. Meredith wrote to Todd estimating the cost of compiling a record of the uncorrelated observations at $155,455. Todd could not afford it and dropped his request. The timeline's figure of $294,157 is reported in secondary accounts of the period, but we could not find the letter containing it.[1]
Context
Around the same time Citizens Against UFO Secrecy and other researchers filed many requests with defence and intelligence agencies, and later sued the CIA and the National Security Agency. Agencies may charge for large searches, and researchers saw such estimates as a way of discouraging requests, while NORAD said its records were not kept in a form that made UFO searches easy.[1][2][3]
Later relevance
The episode is part of a long history of researchers trying to obtain radar and tracking data, an issue that returned in the 2020s when Congress pushed for NORAD and other commands to share UAP data with the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.[3][4]
People and topics
- NORAD — The U.S.–Canadian air defence command.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- Citizens Against UFO Secrecy — A civilian group that sued U.S. agencies for UFO records.
- Freedom of Information Act — The 1966 U.S. law that lets the public request government records.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- AARO — The Pentagon office set up in 2022 to investigate UAP.
On the Timeline
- Del Rio crash claim (13 August 1979) — A retired airman says he learned of a 1950 crash near Del Rio, Texas.
- Weitzel letter (1980) (July 1980) — Air Force counterintelligence officer Richard Doty delivers a forged letter to a civilian UAP group.
See every 1979 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- "NORAD and the UFO smokescreen, part 8", UFOs: Documenting the Evidence (Nov 2023) · ufos-documenting-the-evidence2.blogspot.com · archived copy
- Citizens Against UFO Secrecy — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "X-Files opened: NSA's UFO investigations unearthed", Space.com · space.com · archived copy
- NORAD — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- 'Suit seeks to lift secrecy veil from agency's UFO documents' — CIA reading room · cia.gov · archived copy
- dailydialectics.com · dailydialectics.com · archived copy
- archive.org · archive.org · archived copy
Further reading
- NORAD — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
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.
No discussion yet.