The story originated from Weekly World News, a tabloid known for fabricating stories.

In short, although the document at the center of the claims was genuinely available on the CIA’s website, it was not an official agency report. Rather, it was a translation of a Ukrainian newspaper article based on a fictional story originally published in the tabloid Weekly World News. Additionally, the document was never classified and therefore never declassified. As such, we have rated this claim as false.

We contacted the CIA for comment on the document’s classification status, credibility and source, and will update this article if we receive a response.

What’s actually in the document

The document circulating online appeared on the official CIA website under the title, “Paper reports alleged evidence on mishap involving a UFO.”

It opened with a line crediting the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which the agency established to “monitor, record, transcribe, and analyze foreign broadcasts,” according to records in the National Archives. The third line of the document contained the label “UNCLAS,” indicating the page was never classified — meaning it was also never declassified, despite what some social media users claimed. The fifth line suggested the document was supposed to be passed to the BBC.