Declassified CIA files form bizarre link between JFK assassination and UFOs

‘You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to think it’s suspicious.’

WASHINGTON — Newly declassified U.S. government files from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) are leading some to form a bizarre link between the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and flying saucers. The extraordinary connection comes after President Joe Biden recently cleared formerly top-secret documents to “provide a fuller understanding” of JFK’s murder.

The assassination has been pored over for decades, but one document has revealed the previously redacted name of a CIA official, Reuben Efron, who intercepted Lee Harvey Oswald’s mail in the months before the tragic shooting on Nov. 22, 1963.

However, Efron is named in another file, dated Oct. 15, 1955, which details a bizarre sighting of “flying saucers” while on a train trip through the Soviet Union. The official CIA document says the “reported sighting of unusual aircraft in USSR” was made by “three reliable US observers.”

The excerpt from a cable received from the U.S. Air Force reveals these individuals as Efron, Senator Richard Russell, and a Lt. Col. E. U. Hathaway. Senator Russell would later sit on the Warren Commission, which was tasked with investigating the JFK assassination.

The description of the incident in the “Trancaucasus Region” details “two mound and circular unconventional aircraft resembling flying discs or flying saucers were seen taking off almost vertically one minute apart.”

It goes on to describe the craft as revolving and shooting “sparks or flame,” before passing over the “observer’s train.” The flying discs are said to have ascended before their speed increased “sharply.”

“After sighting, Soviet train men became excited and lowered curtains and refused permission to look out windows,” the report adds. “US observers firmly believe these unconventional aircraft are flying saucer or disc aircraft.”

The memo detailing the intercept of JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s mail has been released before, but Reuben Efron’s name was previously redacted.

“People say there’s nothing significant in these files?” Jefferson Morley, editor of the JFK Facts blog, told The New York Times. “Bingo! Here’s the guy who was reading Oswald’s mail, a detail they failed to share until now. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to think it’s suspicious.”

According to The New York Times, Efron reportedly died three decades ago.

“In the three decades since the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (44 U.S.C. 2107 note) (the “Act”) was enacted, the United States Government has undertaken a comprehensive review of its records and has strived to make available to the public thousands of classified documents that provide a fuller understanding of the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” the White House says, according to a June 30 memorandum issued by President Biden.

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South West News Service writer Dean Murray contributed to this report.