This was a deliberately shocking title. But it was not the end of the story!

The Launch of France's Ariane 5 Rocket
Kourou, French Guyana

A new article of Le Figaro, of July 31, 2004, revealed that CNES was now embarrassed by its decision and was already planning the rebirth of SEPRA, under a new name and with a new man at the helm. Finally, the decision was made in July 2005 by a new Director of CNES, Yannick d'Escatha, to create a department for the study of UFOs once again. Another engineer was named to replace Jacques Velasco. He was Jacques Patenet, 59, a man with a long career at CNES in rocket launching, including the Ariane rockets, at the launching site at Kourou in French Guiana.

Jacques Patenet
French Engineer who replaced SERPA's Jacques Vellasco
as the new Director of GEIPAN

Like the old GEPAN, Patenet and the GEIPAN are under the authority of the CNES hierarchy, but they are also under the control of a "steering committee," called "COPEIPAN ("Comité de pilotage" of GEIPAN). This committee is headed by Yves Sillard - the man who created GEPAN in 1977, now retired after a brilliant career at the head of CNES and at other important posts.

At their first meeting in September 2005, the committee proposed to give the name GEIPAN to the reborn French UFO service. As listed on the GEIPAN web site, the steering committee, COPEIPAN, consists of 15 permanent members:

1. Representatives of such civilian and military authorities as the gendarmerie, police, civil security, DGAC (Direction Générale de l'Aviation Civile), and the French Air Force;

2. Representatives of the scientific world: CNRS (Centre national de la Recherche Scientifique), the weather bureau;

3. CNES, itself.

As with the old GEPAN, agreements of cooperation have been created or updated with these different institutions. GEIPAN may also rely on a network of specialists, so that it is again fully able to work efficiently on new cases.

In January 2006, Jacques Patenet announced that GEIPAN was going to put all its UFO files on the CNES web site. The project is under way, with the release of some 480 files at the end of June 2007, covering the period 1988-2005. This caused quite a stir in the mass media, and even Ciel et Espace was obliged to correct its previous stance about CNES's burial of UFOs with a new article in May 2006, entitled:

The release of the UFO files was announced in many newspapers, with a much more positive tone. The well-known weekly magazine, L'Express, devoted six pages to the subject, something that had not happened for several decades in France. On the other hand, some trendy publications like the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur and the daily, Libération, did not print one word about it. So, there is still, obviously, a long way to go in this country, which still sees itself as a champion of rationalism.

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