Over the years the Historical Office has been asked many times for a copy of an alleged top secret report by SHAPE from the 1960s assessing the threat posed by UFOs to NATO.

 

A retired U.S. Army Sergeant Major named Robert O. Dean has frequently claimed in speeches and internet postings that while stationed at SHAPE in the mid-1960s he read a highly classified document with the title "The Assessment: An Evaluation of a Possible Threat to NATO Forces in Europe”, which studied all aspects of the existence of UFOS and the potential threat they posed to NATO. (For an idea of how widely such claims have circulated, just put the words "Assessment”,” UFOs”, "SHAPE”, and "NATO” into any search engine and see how many thousands of hits you get!)

 

We have analyzed these claims in detail, including a photograph alleged to be of the front cover of the assessment, and have concluded that the cover page is a forgery and that SHAPE prepared no report on UFOs during the 1960s. While some will no doubt dismiss this conclusion as part of some sort of long-standing cover-up of the existence of UFOs, we would like to point out that in the 1960s – like today - SHAPE was confronted by much more pressing threats than UFOS and did not have the time and resources to spend 2½ years studying them, as Sergeant Major Dean alleges. We are not saying that UFOs do or do not exist but simply that SHAPE did not prepare a report on them.

 

For the complete Historical Office analysis of the alleged 1964 SHAPE "Assessment” of UFOs, see "The Alleged SHAPE ‘Assessment' of UFOS: What the Official Historical Records Show” in the Historical Documents section.