The truth is out there – the CIA is offering a peek into its ‘X-files,’ shining a spotlight on a series of once-classified UFO documents. 
 
 “To help navigate the vast amount of data contained in our FOIA UFO collection, we’ve decided to highlight a few documents both skeptics and believers will find interesting,” explained the agency, in a blog post. 
 
 Related: Astronaut Scott Kelly's 'UFO' photo generates extraterrestrial buzz 
 
 The UFO documents, which date primarily from the 1940s and 1950s, are among hundreds that the CIA declassified in 1978. 
 
 Expand / Contract A UFO investigation in Socorro, N.M. (CIA) 
 
 In a nod to Fox’s new “X-Files” series, the agency highlights “five documents we think X-Files character Agent Fox Mulder would love to use to try and persuade others of the existence of extraterrestrial activity.” 
 
 Related: Strange 'ancient face' spotted on Mars rock 
 
 “We also pulled five documents we think his skeptical partner, Agent Dana Scully, could use to prove there is a scientific explanation for UFO sightings,” it added. 
 
 The “Mulder” documents include 1952 reports of flying saucers over the then-East Germany, Spain and North Africa, as well as a survey of UFO reports from the same year. The agency also posted a 1952 report of “two fiery disks” flying over a uranium mine in the then-Belgian Congo and the minutes of a CIA branch chief’s meeting discussing UFOs. 
 
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 The report from East Germany details “an object ‘resembling a huge frying pan’ and having a diameter of about 15 meters [49 feet].” The object landed in a forest clearing in Germany’s Soviet Zone, according to the report. 
 
 “A smoke-trailing object over Barcelona” and an unusual object “emitting a pale green light” over the Tunisian city of Sousse are described in the report from Spain and North Africa. 
 
 Related: NASA's 'flying saucer' in pictures 
 
 Photos posted on the CIA website include an unexplained sighting above Minneapolis in 1960 and another above Sheffield, U.K. two years later. It also posted an image of a UFO investigation in Socorro, N.M. 
 
 The “Mulder” documents include an office memo from 1949, a 1952 memo to the Director of Central Intelligence and a ‘Memorandum for the Record on Flying Saucers,’ also from 1952. The agency also posted a 1953 document detailing the suggestions of a scientific advisory panel on UFOs and the minutes of an Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) UFO advisory group from the same year. ||||| The real-life stories of UFOs would be enough for the fictional "X-Files" FBI agents Mulder and Scully to spend a lifetime investigating. 
 
 With a nod to the new "X-Files" reboot (which airs on Fox on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET), the Central Intelligence Agency has released a trove of once classified documents on several real-life unidentified flying objects. 
 
 Not surprisingly, many of these UFO sightings emerged in the early 1950s. The space race was on, the Cold War fears had reached a fever pitch, and science-fiction movies like "The Flying Saucer" (1950) catapulted schlocky depictions of aliens and their flying machines into the popular consciousness. In fact, by 1953, UFO mania had reached such heights that the CIA marshaled a team of scientific consultants to investigate all of the reports and review the "Unidentified Flying Object Problem," according to a 1953 memorandum by the agency. 
 
 While most of these encounters were likely weird cloud formations, lightning or even missile tests rather than little green men, they still inspire countless conspiracy theories. From the flying frying pan of West Germany to the mysterious craft hovering over uranium mines in Africa, here are some of the CIA's most mysterious X-files. [7 Things Most Often Mistaken for UFOs] 
 
 The flying pan of West Germany 
 
 In 1952, Oscar Linke, the 48-year-old former mayor of Gleimershausen, Germany, and his 11-year-old daughter Gabriella were traveling home, when his tire blew out near the town of Hasselbach. His daughter noticed something in the distance, which he initially thought was a deer. 
 
 When Linke got closer, however, he saw two men peering at what looked like a massive frying pan, between 42 and 49 feet (13 to 15 meters) in diameter, he reported. Around the rim were two rows of holes, each about 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter, and a large, conical tower, about 10 feet (3 m) high, loomed at the top of the object. 
 
 When his daughter called back to him, she startled the two men, who immediately jumped inside the mysterious frying pan, according to the CIA report. 
 
 One of the men, according to Linke, had a round protrusion on his chest that glowed green and then red. While he was watching, the conical structure fell down to the ground, the saucer began rising in the air and its rim was encircled with flames from below. Then, it turned horizontally and took off above the trees, disappearing into the distance. 
 
 "I would have thought that both my daughter and I were dreaming if it were not for the following element involved: When the object had disappeared, I went to the place where it had been. I found a circular opening in the ground, and it was quite evident that it was freshly dug. It was exactly the same shape as the conical tower," Linke testified to a West German judge at the time. 
 
 Linke, who had recently escaped from East Germany, claimed he had never heard of flying saucers when in the Soviet Zone. He was convinced that the flying machine was a Soviet military apparatus. Other people in the area reported seeing what looked like a comet at the time. [Flying Saucers to Mind Control: 7 Declassified Military & CIA Secrets] 
 
 Uranium mine surveys? 
 
 That same year, in what was then the Belgian Congo (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), two fiery discs were spotted hovering over the uranium mines in the Elisabethville district, according to a news report from the local newspaper Die Presse. 
 
 "The disks glided in elegant curves and changed their positions many times, so that from below, they sometimes appeared as plates, ovals and simply lines," the article said. 
 
 According to the article, Cmdr. Pierre, who worked at the Elisabethville airfield, pursued the two flying discs in a fighter plane, but gave up after 15 minutes. He said he estimated the discs were flying at 932 mph (1,500 km/h). The saucer zoomed off, disappearing over Lake Tanganyika. [Supersonic! The 10 Fastest Military Planes] 
 
 According to Pierre, the discs were aluminum-colored metal, between 39 and 49 feet (12 to 15 m) in diameter, and had a central knob that seemed to stay absolutely still as the outer disc rotated at tremendous speeds. The outer circumference was "veiled in fire," according to the report. Like the one in the previous report, this saucer seemed capable of flying both vertically and horizontally, and often "shot down" to within a few hundred feet of the treetops. The pilot thought it was unlikely that the mysterious machine was manned, as the disc's erratic motion and high heat would not allow someone to stay inside. (The dubious aerodynamics of such an object were not mentioned.) 
 
 Though Pierre is noted as a reliable officer, no one else confirmed his sighting. Based on his report, however, the CIA produced a sketch of the purported saucer's dimensions and potential operating principles. 
 
 Smoke trail over Barcelona 
 
 It turned out that 1952 was a hot year for unidentified-object sightings. 
 
 Several people reported seeing lightning-fast objects streaking through the sky over North Africa and Spain. For instance, newspaper reporter Valentín García noticed a smoke trail coming from a strange, rocketlike object flying near Barcelona. After he reported on the object, his office was flooded with calls about the enigmatic object, and one of his friends even captured a photo of the smoke trail, García reported. 
 
 That same year, people in Sousse, Tunisia, reported seeing "a flying object traveling at dizzying speed from west to east emitting a pale green light." 
 
 And in Morocco, witnesses reported a flying saucer shooting silently through the sky. In comparison, the flights of nearby T-33 fighter planes seemed slow. The object traced a parabola in the sky, paused, and then streaked off toward a town in the south. 
 
 The CIA did not release documents to show exactly how all of those investigations were resolved, but other documents suggest that most seem to be hoaxes or misidentified objects. 
 
 In a 1953 report by a scientific advisory panel to investigate UFOs, agency officials noted that "the Panel members were impressed by the lack of sound data in the great majority of case histories." 
 
 For most of the cases, expert investigators uncovered reasonable explanations for the sightings, and for others, a process of induction suggested similar reports could be dismissed as well, the panel found. 
 
 Follow Tia Ghose on Twitterand Google+. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. ||||| The CIA declassified hundreds of documents in 1978 detailing the Agency’s investigations into Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). The documents date primarily from the late 1940s and 1950s. 
 
 To help navigate the vast amount of data contained in our FOIA UFO collection, we’ve decided to highlight a few documents both skeptics and believers will find interesting. Below you will find five documents we think X-Files character Agent Fox Mulder would love to use to try and persuade others of the existence of extraterrestrial activity. We also pulled five documents we think his skeptical partner, Agent Dana Scully, could use to prove there is a scientific explanation for UFO sightings. 
 
 The truth is out there; click on the links to find it. 
 
 Top 5 CIA Documents Mulder Would Love To Get His Hands On: 
 
 Top 5 CIA Documents Scully Would Love To Get Her Hands On: 
 
 
 
 
 
 Do you want to believe? Then find out how to investigate a flying saucer. ||||| Proponents of theories and ideologies are always looking for that knockout punch – the smoking-gun evidence that proves their beliefs in a single stroke. Most theories are too complex to be established by a single piece of evidence, and require multiple independent lines of evidence to establish them. But there are often cases in which a single solid piece of evidence can push a theory over the line to general acceptance. 
 
 For many pseudosciences the lack of such smoking-gun evidence calls the claims into serious question. There are no artifacts from Atlantis. There is no bigfoot corpse or live specimen. And there are no crashed alien spaceships or, you know – aliens. Incidentally this is not the case for truly paranormal claims, like ghosts, because by being “paranormal” they would require a large set of rigorous evidence to establish a new phenomenon. But one actual bigfoot would do it. 
 
 So it is no surprise that from time to time we hear claims that “final proof” has finally come to light of one pseudoscientific claim or another. Just such a claim is now circulating regarding an FBI document from 1950 – a report regarding the recovery of three “flying saucers” in New Mexico. Here is the full text of the document, dated March 22, 1950: 
 
 
 
 “The following information was furnished to SA (redacted) by (redacted).”An investigator for the Air Forces stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed flyers and test pilots. “No further evaluation was attempted by SA (redacted) concerning the above.” 
 
 This is very provocative. To someone predisposed to believe in the Roswell incident and the whole government cover-up of recovered aliens, this might seem light smoking-gun evidence. But let’s break it down a bit. 
 
 The memo comes from the FBI vault (which seems legitimate, since only the government can have a .gov URL) and is made available through a freedom of information (FOI) request. Guy Hottel is described as in charge of the Washington field office. The memo seems like the routine reporting up the chain of information coming into the office. I searched on “Guy Hottel” on the vault site, but no other relevant documents came up. 
 
 The date of the memo places it three years after the Roswell incident in 1947. The Daily Mail reproduced the document claiming it as “proof” of aliens at Roswell (although Roswell is not mentioned by name in the memo). They also reproduced another document from the FBI, this one from 1947 which does reference Roswell, claiming that the sighting of a: 
 
 “disc is hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a balloon by cable.” 
 
 The memo author concluded that the object was a high altitude weather balloon, which fits with the current explanation that the crash at Roswell was in fact a spy balloon from Project Mogul. 
 
 The new memo, from three years later, must therefore refer to a separate incident. If the report can be believed, there were then three separate crashes of flying saucers all in the New Mexico area. Maybe the aliens were having problems with drunk flyers at the time. These alleged three further crashes did not appear to be witnessed, and once again there is no physical evidence to back up these claims. 
 
 Let’s also be clear about what the memo is – it’s hearsay. It is not a report from the investigator himself, and it contains scant details. It is little more than a rumor. The name of the informant was redacted, but it does not sound like the informant is the investigator himself. This memo seems like nothing more than the background noise of reports that any intelligence agency receives. 
 
 The body of the report is also very telling. The flying saucers are described as looking exactly like flying saucers looked from 1950s science fiction. This is the ship from Forbidden Planet. The aliens themselves are clothed in shimmering metallic fabric – again, right out of contemporary science fiction. This is three years after Roswell, and clearly the mythology had already evolved a bit. There was a rash of “flying saucer” reports at that time, and it’s no surprise that intelligence agencies were paying attention (especially in light of the growing cold war with the Soviet Union). 
 
 The final line of the report is also very telling – the SA did not feel that any further investigation was required. It certainly seems as if they did not take the report very seriously. This is the kind of report that we would expect to emerge from the pop culture of flying saucer fascination in 1950. It’s not the kind of report we would expect if there were a serious investigation into real alien encounters and cover-ups by the government. One might argue that the FBI were out of the loop (at least at the level of the Washington Field office), but that also would mean that this memo does not emerge from any privileged information or access and again is just rumor. 
 
 No matter how you slice it, this memo is nothing but rumor being passed routinely up the chain, without any indication that it was taken seriously. It reflects the popular culture of the time, and provides no real evidence or insight. This is not the smoking-gun that UFO enthusiasts have been hoping for.
– With the revival of The X-Files already proving to be one of 2016's most popular shows, everyone's jumping on the bandwagon, including the CIA. Fox News reports the CIA recently drew attention to some of the documents related to UFOs it first declassified in 1978. A blog post by the CIA highlights "five documents we think X-Files character Agent Fox Mulder would love to use to try and persuade others of the existence of extraterrestrial activity" and "five documents we think his skeptical partner, Agent Dana Scully, could use to prove there is a scientific explanation for UFO sightings." The "Mulder" documents include 1952 UFO sightings in East Germany—a father and daughter spotted a UFO in a field accompanied by two men in shiny suits (PDF here); Spain—a newspaper office was "flooded" with calls about a smoke-trailing UFO (PDF here); and the Belgian Congo—a fighter plane chased after two UFOs making inhumanly abrupt changes in course (PDF here). Most of the CIA's declassified UFO documents come from the 1940s and 1950s, and Live Science notes that this isn't a surprise as the imaginations of people at the time were running rampant with sci-fi movies, the space race, and the Cold War. In most of the reported cases, it adds, "expert investigators uncovered reasonable explanations for the sightings," such as missile tests or cloud formations. Scully would be proud. (Now about those weird space balls in Vietnam.)