Television documentaries about UFO's have become popular attractions on cable TV. The quality varies, as some are generic, rehashing the same well-known photos, videos, interviews, and stories. Some are very professionally produced and offer new insights into the UFO phenomena. One in particular, while of itself was admittedly a poorly directed hodgepodge still provided a new and extremely compelling piece of evidence for the existence of "flying saucers." On September 13, 1998, TNT Network aired "The Secret KGB UFO Files."
Purportedly smuggled out of the former USSR and obtained on the black market for $10.000 was a segment that showed the recovery of a downed flying saucer by elements of the KGB and Soviet military personnel. According to a plethora of documentation that came with the film footage, the crash occurred in late 1968 with the recovery being made in March of 1969. The doomed craft was driven, on-edge, halfway into the ground at the edge of a forest tree-line.
Extensive study of both the film and the related documents has continued to withstand investigation. The vehicles and uniforms of the people in the video match what was in use in 1969. The unit patches of the military personnel are accurate and conform to the branch that would be most likely involved in such strange recovery operations. The civilian clothing of the KGB agents are consistent with that organization's operatives. The letterhead and other features of the documents prove consistent with the time period and the organizations that issued them.
The reports indicate that part of a body was also recovered from the wreckage. This was subsequently delivered to the Semashko Hospital in Moscow where it was autopsied. In the film footage of this procedure, three doctors, Kamyshov, Savitsky, and Gordeenko undertook the work with KGB stenographer O.A. Pshonkina taking notes.
During this period of Cold War history the Soviet Union took the official stance that UFO's were an American nonsense and considered belief in such as a mental disturbance worthy of institutionalizing. As a tragic footnote to this investigation of a seemingly extraterrestrial body, the Death Certificates of all three of the attending physicians showed they died in different locations around Moscow of cerebral hemorrhages on March 24, 1969, just one week after the autopsy was performed.
Despite the film becoming public through a movie studio's production, none of the debunkers have ever been able to come up with a single shred of proof that the film was anything but authentic. The cost of hoaxing the film and authenticating documents and film canister would be both prohibitive and possibly impossible. A number of film experts have verified the authenticity of the film and its terrestrial components and showed no sign of tampering of any sort.
Unlike the undocumented crash that supposedly took place in Roswell, New Mexico, the crash and recovery in the Sverdlovsk region of Russia was well documented, however secret the Soviet government kept it. The disbanding of the USSR allowed many secret things to come to light. Among them is this film which has continued to demonstrate the veracity of the event where they in fact recovered the craft and body of some alien visitor to our planet.