Australia's military has lost its X-Files, detailing sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, across the country, a newspaper report said Tuesday.
After a two-month search in response to a newspaper Freedom of Information (FOI) request, which forces government officials to release documents of public interest, Australia's Department of Defense had been unable to locate the files, the Sydney Morning Herald said.
"The files could not be located and Headquarters Air Command formally advised that this file is deemed lost," the department's FOI assistant director, Natalie Carpenter, told the paper. Defense officials could not be contacted by Reuters.
The only file Defense had been able to locate was a folder called: "Report on UFOs/Strange Occurrences and Phenomena in Woomera," a military weapons testing range in the center of Australia's vast outback, Carpenter said.
All other files had been lost or destroyed, which the Herald said could fuel conspiracy theories about their disappearance.
The single remaining file detailed a sketchy series of sightings from around the country and overseas, including people living in towns near Woomera, in South Australia state.
Object sightingThe newspaper report said only some old press clippings and some formal government correspondence remain. Among the papers, it was revealed that the Australian UFO Research Association located some now-missing files six years ago, and the organization's summary of the files "is one of the few complete items left in the remaining dossier."
Included in that summary is the report of an October 1952 Woomera incident in which a military officer reported seeing an object's flight path, which he was able to track for 24 minutes using radar equipment. The report said the officer was not, however, able to see the object using a normal telescope.
The officer later concluded that what he saw was in fact a snow cloud, the report said.
X Files, named after a popular U.S. television science fiction program, refer to supposed government records detailing paranormal mysteries, usually involving fictitious alien species.
Australia's military had decided to stop taking UFO sighting reports in late 2000, the Herald said, asking members of the public to report incidents to police instead.
The newspaper said it submitted the request after the British government released thousands of pages of documents detailing 800 encounters reported during the 1980s and 1990s last year.