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Conspiracy

1962 'thing in the woods' was CIA spy camera

By T.K. Randall
July 26, 2017 · Comment icon 10 comments

Eisenhower had given the project the go-ahead. Image Credit: Public Domain
A mystery spanning over 55 years has finally been solved thanks to newly released CIA documents.
The incident began when David McPherson Sr. discovered a strange box hanging from a rotting parachute in the woods near Moncton in 1962. The mystery only deepened when, after being transported back to the family's property, the object was promptly confiscated by the military.

Now more than five decades after the 'thing' was discovered, newly declassified documents from the Central Intelligence Agency have revealed that it was actually a high-altitude balloon-mounted spy camera designed to take photographs over Soviet Russia.

"It's hard to put into words," said David McPherson Jr. whose father originally discovered the object. "It's so exciting and it turns out it was a CIA spy camera. There was just too much to it."

"These camera lenses were huge, the secrecy around it. And I guess looking back now, the army probably had no choice - they couldn't tell us what it was."
Entitled 'Project Genetrix', the operation, which had been approved by President Dwight Eisenhower, aimed to learn more about what was occurring in Soviet Russia and Communist China.

For whatever reason, this particular camera had been blown off course and ended up in Canada.

"What I want to know is what was on that camera," said James Rogers who had orginally helped McPherson move it out of the forest. "I would suspect there was film in there, and it would be really interesting to learn what it was taking pictures of."



Source: CBC.ca | Comments (10)




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Recent comments on this story
Comment icon #1 Posted by BeastieRunner 7 years ago
Cameras and weather balloons, eh?
Comment icon #2 Posted by flyingswan 7 years ago
Genetrix has been declassified for many years.  It was a forerunner to the Corona satellite cameras.
Comment icon #3 Posted by RoofGardener 7 years ago
Umm... how was this EXPECTED to work ? I mean... you launch a weather balloon, and just HOPE it drifts over Russia ? I assume the camera would have had somesort of clockwork timer to tell it when to take pictures ? But... how would the CIA know WHERE it was likely to be at any moment in time in order to pre-program the clockwork ? And finally... how where they proposing to recover it afterwards ? I mean... it could have ended up almost ANYWHERE ? Or was this just a prototype to test the camera out ?
Comment icon #4 Posted by Rolci 7 years ago
what better way to spend taxpayers' money these days than "declassifying" documents that offer convenient explanations for unexplained stuff in the past. Guess they're going to declassify the Roswell weather balloons soon too, adding as an interesting feature the presence of dummies looking like alien bodies as in the testimonies. Phew, good thing that's not MY tax money.
Comment icon #5 Posted by flyingswan 7 years ago
They launched hundreds of them from several different sites to the west of the USSR, taking advantage of prevailing winds to take them across the target.  They got about 10% of them back, managed to photograph a lot of territory.
Comment icon #6 Posted by badeskov 7 years ago
The weather balloons used at Roswell were never classified. The payload was, which is now long declassified. Cheers, Badeskov 
Comment icon #7 Posted by Obviousman 7 years ago
This gives some background: http://stratocat.com.ar/stratopedia/28.htm  
Comment icon #8 Posted by RoofGardener 7 years ago
That is a VERY interesting read; thank you for posting it Obviousman.
Comment icon #9 Posted by third_eye 7 years ago
Ahhh ... such was the innocence of the times back then ... who would've suspected balloons for such nefarious purposes ... ~
Comment icon #10 Posted by Bama13 7 years ago
Well the Japanese used balloons to bomb the US in WWII.


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