Retired French generals and officials publish the COMETA report
1999 · Paris, France · Media disclosure · Primary document linked
On 16 July 1999 an independent group chaired by retired Air Force General Denis Letty, many of them former auditors of France's Institute for Higher National Defence Studies (IHEDN), published the 90-page report 'UFOs and Defense: What must we be prepared for?', after sending it to President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Lionel Jospin. It called the physical reality of intelligently controlled UFOs 'quasi-certain' and treated the extraterrestrial hypothesis as the one that best fit the data, while saying it was unproven.
Why it matters (3/5)
A high-profile unofficial report arguing that some cases deserved a defense response.
Caveats
COMETA was a private association, not a government commission, and critics dismissed its members as retirees. The report itself is linked but was not opened.
Sources
- The COMETA report (Patrick Gross, UFOs at close sight), context
- Les OVNI et la Defense: A quoi doit-on se preparer? (COMETA, 1999) (COMETA association), primary