X-Files Mulder and Scully would “love to get their hands on these,” declares CIA
For some, mocking the critics of UFO believers — and equally those who earnestly believe in extraterrestrials — comes as a bit of a game. Most of us are guilty of it at some point. But the CIA itself once joined in on the UFO debate, offering several cases for those like X-Files agent Dana Scully, and several that might interest Fox Mulder. Yes, that’s exactly how the official CIA website worded the introduction to a batch of images and files released in the 1940s and 1950s, highlighting the documents thought to be of particular interest.
The CIA offered to ‘assist’ the public in navigating the vast trove of files released under the Freedom of Information Act. The collection highlighted by the CIA, according to the agency, was meant to present both sides of the argument with a wink toward the cult sci-fi series.
Top 5 CIA Documents Mulder Would Love To Get His Hands On:
- Flying Saucers Reported Over East Germany, 1952 (PDF 325 KB)
- Minutes of Branch Chief’s Meeting on UFOs, 11 August 1952 (PDF 162 KB)
- Flying Saucers Reported Over Spain and North Africa, 1952 (PDF 266 KB)
- Survey of Flying Saucer Reports, 1 August 1952 (PDF 175 KB)
- Flying Saucers Reported Over Belgian Congo Uranium Mines, 1952 (PDF 262 KB)
Top 5 CIA Documents Scully Would Love To Get Her Hands On:
- Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects, 14-17 January 1953 (PDF 907 KB)
- Office Memorandum on Flying Saucers, 15 March 1949 (PDF 110 KB)
- Memorandum to the CIA Director on Flying Saucers, 2 October 1952 (PDF 443 KB)
- Meeting of the OSI Advisory Group on UFOs, 21 January 1953 (PDF 194 KB)
- Memorandum for the Record on Flying Saucers, 3 December 1952 (PDF 179 KB)
From Cold War Saucer Files to the Modern UAP Fight
What began with the CIA winking at Mulder and Scully fans has since hardened into one of the most serious transparency battles in Washington. The terminology itself has shifted — what the public long called UFOs is now officially logged as “unidentified anomalous phenomena,” or UAP, a label meant to cover not just objects in the sky but transmedium craft seen moving through air and water. The Pentagon now runs the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), which was created under a National Defense Authorization Act mandate in 2022 and reached full operational capacity in 2024 to centralize the government’s study of these reports.
The push for disclosure has only intensified. On September 9, 2025, the House Oversight Committee’s Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, chaired by Representative Anna Paulina Luna, convened a hearing titled “Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection.” Military veterans and witnesses, including Air Force veteran Jeffrey Nuccetelli and UAP journalist George Knapp, testified about encounters with craft that appeared to outperform known technology, while lawmakers pressed for stronger whistleblower protections and stricter oversight of AARO and the intelligence community.
The legislative pressure has continued into the fiscal 2026 NDAA, which includes provisions directing AARO to brief Congress on the number, location, and nature of any UAP intercepts carried out by Northcom and NORAD around North America, and to account for the security classification guides that have governed UAP reporting. Transparency advocates have argued that overclassification has kept previously unclassified material out of public view, and both AARO and the National Archives are now tasked under several NDAA mandates with digitizing, declassifying, and releasing government records on UAP.
Watch the September 2025 House Oversight UAP transparency hearing below:
For more on how the U.S. government’s posture on this subject has shifted over the years, see our earlier report on how the Pentagon admitted to tracking UFOs and released Navy videos at the heart of the UAP disclosure debate. Decades after the CIA’s tongue-in-cheek nod to its “X-Files,” the documents Mulder and Scully would have chased are no longer just curiosities — they sit at the center of a real fight over what the public is allowed to know.
