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Official, France:

From "GEPAN" to "SEPRA":

This document was reproduced in the ufological litterature long ago.

The document:

The translated transcription:

I want to give some explanations in connection with this document.

As everyone can know or ignore, in 1977 France set up an official group to study UFO reports, called GEPAN, which functioned within the CNES, France's small NASA equivalent.

GEPAN did their work and, concluded that there are UFO reports having ordinary explanations, but also other reports, which are reports of real objects which cannot come from out planet. The publication of this result (*) was forbidden by CNES. The head of the GEPAN, Claude Poher, quit to go boating, which much intrigued ufologists here.

(*) I cannot repeat all the story and reproduce the file here, other documents in this section clarify or will clarify all these points.

Claude Poher explains in connection with a case into which he inquired when he was the head of GEPAN (http://www.premiumwanadoo.com/universons/ovni_gbFr/cussac_fr.html):

"Thus, my objective here is really "to help our contemporaries to make their opinion by themselves on the facts of Cussac". Because I thinks that the stake is important. It indeed seems to me that I have some reasons to provide a knowledgeable opinion, because it was me who founded GEPAN within CNES in 1977. It is me who carried out the official field investigation, in Cussac, in 1978, during two days, with three other people. It is me who presented the analysis of the testimonys of Cussac to an official scientific committee composed of eight people, in 1978. Finally it is me who decided to leave the direction of GEPAN in 1979, quite simply because CNES intended "to prevent us from publishing our work", for reasons "obviously scientific", as would state publicly Mr Curien 25 years later, to a journalist of "Ciel et Espace" in 2004, "That formed part of the contract. We did not wish to publish so that we not not enter a public polemic."

The letter which precedes establishes the replacement of the GEPAN by the SEPRA.

Two things are to be noted:

• There is now a mixture of two missions: to study UFOs (renamed UAPs), and to study falling satellites and space junk. This mixture obviously makes it possible confuse the UFO issue, or to undertake the study of the "flying saucers", a topic seen as ridiculous and which attracts mockeries onto the CNES, under a more serious cover of studying all kinds of less "ridiculous" things from the sky.
• The results of GEPAN were prohibited of publication, whereas the GEPAN was initially up to tell the French people whether UFOs exist and what they are, without making any mystery. For SEPRA which replaces GEPAN, it is clear from the start: nothing serious will be made public, nobody needs to know what is done, the public does not deserve to be informed, and that's final.

When at the beginning of the 90's, Jean-Jacques Velasco, the engineer who headed this SEPRA wrote that UFOs are real, he will have no document, no work completed within the SEPRA, to justify its opinion.

When in the beginning of 2005, he published his book to tell there that UFOs are extraterrestrial, he will have nothing either to publish resulting from SEPRA work, no document, no case file, no work, to justify his opinion, except three already known cases dating from the GEPAN times.

And SEPRA is then closed by CNES, CNES making clear that the extraterrestrial UFOS are only one personal opinion of Jean-Jacques Vélasco, and that his mission will continue in some other form, remaining to be defined.

All this does not prevent some people here from swearing that there is no UFO secrecy in France, that all is clear and transparent...

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This page was last updated on July 3, 2005.