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On The Death & Rebirth of Official French UFO Studies: 2004 - 2007
by Gildas Bourdais
(Copyright 2007, Gildas Bourdais - All Rights Reserved)
March 2007:
The Release of the French UFO files
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.
 OVNIS Appear Once Again in L'Express
March 22, 2007
Recently, Jacques Patenet appeared, with Alain Cirou, the editor of Ciel et Espace, on a well-known TV program called ''C dans l'air ("It's in the air"), televised on March 30.
Questioned bluntly by host and journalist, Yves Calvi, on the reality of UFOs, Patenet said unequivocally that, "Yes, there are UFOs, even if there are not many" (in his opinion).
Calvi then asked the same question to Cirou who, obviously embarrassed, made a more evasive answer. I was invited, too, and I can say that it was a very amusing moment. It signalled, perhaps, the beginning of a new tone in the French media in regard to UFOs.
Until recently, the same journalist would have rather invited, together with Cirou, the astronomer, André Brahic, well known for his total skepticism on UFOs. On the other hand, a sociologist, Pierre Lagrange, a friend of Cirou, was also there, but he gave signs of changing subtly his standard opinion on UFOs, away from his usual psychosocial explanation to a prudent recognition of a certain reality of UFOs.
However, the battle is not over in the French media. On June 29, a new TV show at the national network, France 3, "Pièces à conviction", leaned heavily in favor of the skeptics, such as Henri Broch, of the group, "Zététique", which is the French version of the American CSICOP. On the other hand, the daily paper Libération, granted me a one page, positive interview, on August 3. But let's forget about that and come back to the UFO files.
The first inquiries made by CNES began in 1977 with the creation of the first service called "GEPAN," but there are files from the 1950s & 1960s (and even one dating from 1937!).
As we have seen, the gendarmerie already had more than 300 files in 1974, and it was then collecting about one hundred reports a year. In 1978, the first statistical study, made by Claude Poher, was based upon 678 reports. There are now 1,650 "official" files in France, including some 6,000 witnesses, comprising more than 100,000 pages of documents.
The rest of GEIPAN's UFO files should be posted by the end of this year (although that seems a rather ambitious goal). In any case, a first effect of this project seems to have been a renewed estimate of the percentage of unknown cases, rather dramatically, as we shall now see.
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