On October 24th, 1991, documents were provided to former Soviet cosmonaut Pavel Popovich, the then President of the All-Union Ufological Association in Russia. These files contained copies of UFO reports sent to the infamous KGB. An accompanying letter was written by the Deputy Chairman of the Committee for State Security USSR, N.A. Sham. The files consisted of handwritten reports, typed testimonies, notes from KGB informers, crude drawings and eyewitness reports of UFOs. This cooperation between UFO researchers and the KGB was unprecedented and was a landmark in UFO research in the Soviet Union and possibly the world. Sixteen years later we have managed to catch up with the now former Deputy Commander of the KGB, and published here for the first time is an interview with the man himself.

Translated by Paul Stonehill and reproduced with the kind permission of NTV.

Former KGB Deputy Commander Nikolay Alekseyevich Sham

In June 2007 I was asked for an interview by NTV. NTV is one of the largest TV companies in Russia. Apparently they were making a new UFO documentary and wanted to discuss with me my research into the Alien Autopsy film and the book I had co-authored with Paul Stonehill (Mysterious Sky-Soviet UFO Phenomenon).

The journalist Alexey Egorov along with his cameraman and translator Elena Volkovaya duly arrived and the interview took place at my home in West Yorkshire. After the interview we discussed many things and Alexey informed me that he had interviewed the former Deputy Chairman of the KGB Nikolay Sham, and discussed with him their release of official KGB UFO files to Russian UFO researchers. This is covered in our book Mysterious Sky. Alexey went on to say that he could provide me with a transcript of his interview with Nikolay Sham. This duly arrived via email and was quickly translated by my colleague Paul Stonehill. Nothing has been omitted from the following interview, although Paul Stonehill has inserted a few things in brackets for clarification purposes only.

The full interview is reproduced here with kind permission of NTV in Moscow.

Nikolay Alekseyevich Sham was born in 1940. He was in the KGB from 1966 to 1991. From 1974, he worked in the central administration of the KGB. He was involved with the operational, technical and scientific projects. In 1986 he was with the commission that investigated the Chernobyl disaster. His rank was deputy chief of the 6th Directorate of the KGB (this is where revolutionary scientific ideas and hi-tech technologies were researched and provided protection from foreign agents; this is also where the Soviet economic espionage against other nations was generated). He left the KGB in 1992, because of health reasons. In 1999 he headed a private corporation, Greenmaster, involved in the production of various devices using technologies of the defense industry. Later he was the General Director of First Leasing Company (2003). He is mentioned in Russian media in connection with paranormal phenomena.

The former KGB Major-General, Nikolay Sham, who for a time served as a KGB deputy chairman, had turned over to cosmonaut Popovich a 127-page record of anomalous events observed on the territory of the former Soviet Union and in the Russian Federation.

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