The CIA has kept tabs on strange and unusual events happening in Scotland, newly released documents show.

Contained in the declassified X-files is paranormal research to political intrigue - including a reported UFO sighting over Scotland in 1957.

Dusty files locked away include UFO sightings, psychic powers and Cold War espionage over decades of spy games.

Lecturer in intelligence and international security at the University of Glasgow Damien Van Puyvelde told the Daily Record : “The references reflect the global scope of CIA activities and the evolution of its interests.

“From assessments of the Soviet economy, to public perception of the Vietnam War abroad, to perceived communist influence in Latin America, to the rise of the terrorist threat, and more eccentric issues like UFOs and psychists.

“All of these can be linked to the broader context of the Cold War.”

CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia. (
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Buried in the historical files is a 1964 report by the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena research group - which included retired armed services chiefs.

Kept in closed CIA files for nearly 40 years, the 186-page document lists UFO sightings across the globe and includes a mysterious case in Wigtownshire, Scotland, on April 4, 1957.

It tells how three radar posts tracked a UFO which “dove and circled” at between 60,000 and 14,000ft.

The close encounter was described by Wing Commander W P Whitworth, based in Scotland, as: “Quite definitely this was no freak.

“It was an object of some substance and no mistake could have been made.”

Some of the weirdest records relate to the controversial Stargate programme which has long fascinated conspiracy theorists.

The shadowy work was widely credited for influencing the 2009 movie The Men Who Stare at Goats - starring George Clooney and Ewan McGregor.

In the film, US special forces attempt to harness paranormal powers as a weapon - by trying to explode the hearts of animals just by looking at them.

Recommendations in the report include boosting attempts to communicate with extraterrestrials and even drafting ‘space law’ to govern how humans interact with ET.

It concludes: “On the basis of the evidence in this report, NICAP has concluded that UFOs are real and that they appear to be intelligently controlled.

“We believe that it is a reasonable hypothesis that UFOS (beyond those explainable as conventional objects or phenomena) are manifestations of extraterrestrial life.”

George Clooney in the Men Who Stare at Goats (
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Publicity Picture)

However, the report accepted that evidence was too “sketchy” to suggest what aliens looked like or the purpose of their visits to earth.

Van Puyvelde said: “Sightings of unidentified flying objects could provide information on Soviet ballistic missiles or airplanes.

“It was also important to understand and manage people’s threat perception.”

He said a CIA study group concluded the Soviets could use UFO reports to generate “panic” and wage a form of information warfare.

Van Puyvelde added: “UFO reports could also be used to overload the US air warning system.”

It certainly appears to have been too early to break out the intergalactic welcome mats.

Van Puyvelde said: “In general though, CIA and US Air Force investigations into these found that most of them could be linked to optical illusions and hallucinations, hoaxes and misinterpretations.”

In the 1980s, the CIA took an interest in the work of leading Edinburgh University parapsychologist Deborah Delanoy.

She exposed a “bright and very affable” 17-year-old self-proclaimed metal-bender called Tim as a fake in 1983-84.

Delanoy’s report reads: “Tim claimed to have started bending metal, mostly cutlery, at the age of four and to have been doing so ever since.”

After seven-and-a-half months of lab tests, researchers began to suspect Tim was a fraud and used a hidden camera to expose him.

The report continues: “Tim confessed to deceptive behaviour. He said that he was a practicing magician who had wished to see if it were possible for a magician to pose successfully as a psychic in a laboratory.”

Pan Am 747 airliner that exploded and crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland (
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AFP/Getty Images)

Delanoy concludes: “We must never let ourselves forget that our subjects may be deceiving us”.

Van Puyvelde explained why CIA agents tasked with defending the most powerful country in the world against all foes might be interested, at least for a time, in Scots spoon-bending teens.

He said: “The focus on psychics also sounds quite eccentric. But when digging further we can see an agency that looks for scientific studies to inform its views, following rumours that the Soviet Union was interested in psychics in the 1970s.

“This search for scientific evidence inevitably creates links with universities, more often than not in indirect ways.

“The CIA’s own conclusion by the mid-1990s was that the entire program was not useful to its operations.”

An offshoot of the Stargate programme was project Sun Streak - which tried to tackle the Lockerbie bombing in unorthodox fashion.

Pan Am Flight 103 was brought down over the Scottish village by the device on December 21, 1988, killing all 259 passengers and crew on board and a further 11 people on the ground.

By 1990, the investigation was still ongoing and it would be another year until Libyans Abdelbaset al-Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah were indicted.

On June 7 of that year at an unknown location, a psychic was tasked with describing a photo of the reconstructed baggage carrier which held the plane’s bomb.

Filed under “special access required”, the notes are headed: “Warning notice: Intelligence sources and methods involved.”

Sun Streak’s mission was to collect intelligence information through ‘psychoenergetics’ - including telepathy.

Roy Jenkins making victory speech March 1982 (
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Daily Record)

The Lockerbie test produced 22 pages of scrawled notes and sketches and a typed up account of the session.

Notes state: “There is a bomb in the box and it explodes.

“It makes me think of a bomb blowing up a person. I can see red, fire and jagged flames. Something about the target makes my eyes burn.”

An information report, marked ‘secret’ from August 1951 shows the lengths the CIA went to in order to monitor activity in the Eastern Bloc - however mundane it might appear.

Released 50 years later and still with redacted sections, the file contains two reports on the production of screws and bolts in what was then Czechoslovakia.

US intelligence services are known to have meticulously monitored industry output in the Societ bloc for fear of any military or technological use.

Intelligence experts say firms in the Eastern Bloc were often used as fronts for the USSR to get around trade barriers with the West for any goods on watch lists.

Buried in the report is an order in June 1950 for one tonne of two-pointed rivets imported to Prague from Dieck’s Ltd in Glasgow.

The report adds: “There is a complete lack of all sizes of winged screws. There are none at all in stock.”

The University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland (
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Getty Images/iStockphoto)

However seemingly innocuous the order, authors of the report requested “evaluation of this material” within a month.

Glasgow was even mentioned in dispatches during the Vietnam War - at what would become one of American foreign policy’s darkest hours.

A memo marked ‘confidential’ on August 6, 1964, examines foreign reaction to the “Crisis in Vietnam”- specifically US airstrikes against the North.

The date is highly significant coming the day after a report to Congress on the notorious Gulf of Tonkin incident which led to the escalation of US action in Vietnam.

It detailed an attack on a US warship by North Vietnamese torpedo boats - reports later debunked as US government lies to justify a war against the communist North.

The memo mentions how the escalating crisis in South East Asia was front page news in the UK - with most media backing US action.

Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home was returning to London from a holiday in Scotland and  was expected to issue a statement.

The memo adds: “The only anti-American incident reported was in Glasgow where demonstrators daubed slogans outside the US consulate.”

Margaret Smith (
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Daily Record)

A terrorism review from 1983 delves into a rise in letter bombs in the UK - with the Scottish National Liberation Army among those responsible.

Branded ‘secret’, the report was deemed so sensitive, it was only released in 2010 and even then in a “sanitized” form.

It chronicles eight letter bombs attributed to the SNLA in a little over a year between March 1982 and the following spring.

Targets were identified as an undisclosed location in Edinburgh on March 1, 1982, followed by government offices in both the capital and Glasgow on March 17.

In May, letter bombs were sent to the Assembly Rooms in Edinburgh, followed by unnamed political party headquarters in the capital on June 19.

On November 22, 1982, the British Industry Secretary was targeted in London, followed by Glasgow’s City Hall on February 17, 1983.

Later that year, letter bombs were set to the Prime Minister’s Office in London on successive days - March 15 and 16.

Authors describe the SNLA as “a Scottish separatist group opposed to British rule.”

They conclude: “In the attacks to date, the letter bombs have contained only small amounts of explosives, probably to avoid personal injury and to preclude discovery by security measures.”

A ‘top secret’ national intelligence cable from March 1982 reveals the extent of the CIA’s interest in UK domestic politics.

It includes analysis of Roy Jenkins’ Glasgow by-election victory on March 26 when he won a third of the vote in overturning a Tory majority of 2,000.

It credits the win as reviving the Social Democrat/Liberal alliance of the day but predicted “potentially serious differences” to come.

The report’s writers comment: “Jenkins’s victory at least temporarily will breathe new life into the Social Democrats’ sagging fortunes and should make him the clear favorite to be elected party leader at next fall’s annual conference.”

Andrew McIntosh of the Scottish National Liberation Army (
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Daily Record)

Jenkins was indeed made leader of the SDP ahead of the 1983 general election - only to resign after a disappointing SDP performance.

A quarterly report on ‘significant international terrorist incidents’ from 1981 documents an attack on the US consulate in Edinburgh.

CIA analysts embarrassingly refer to the consulate as being in England before giving an account of the September 5 incident.

They report how three “gasoline” bombs were hurled at the ground floor windows of the consulate on plush Regent Terrace.

The author’s assessment goes on: “A security-glass window cracked but kept the bombs out of the building.

“Damage was minor and no injuries were reported. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.”

In the mid-1950s, CIA analysts bemoan Pakistan’s move into jute production - to the detriment of Dundee.

A confidential report from 1955 links the shift into the trade in Asia to nationalism.

It adds: “Formerly the jute produced in Pakistan was manufactured in India and at Dundee, Scotland; and that city was the center for the marketing of the finished product.”

Report authors list three Dundee firms as jute kingpins - MacGregor, Gateshead and John Ireland and Son.

American parapsychologist Deborah Delanoy who worked at Edinburgh University (
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Daily Record)

They conclude: “Now they will be forced to turn to other activities or their employees will be thrown out of work.”

A ‘secret’ intelligence report from March 1984 tackles European, including Scots, support for communist regimes in Central America.

At the time, CIA chiefs were trying to stop the toppling of regimes to their south by revolutionaries aligned with the Soviet Union.

Intelligence chatter was rife over where the next Cuba would be with Nicaragua only recently falling to the Sandinistas.

Worse still, the leftist guerillas appeared to be winning the propaganda war in the west by drumming up sympathies.

The report points the finger at the Soviet Bloc with a “massive propaganda and disinformation” campaign launched in 1980.

Documents seized from captured insurgents in El Salvador reveal guerillas coordinating their international activities through Mexico City, claims the report.

It states: “During 1981, some 80 mass meetings were held ranging from 15 people in Adelaide, Australia, to 75 people in Vancouver, Canada, to a few hundred in Edinburgh.

“This process could one be carried out through the apparatus that the communists have put together in the world peace movement, student groups, unions etc.

“There is no way a small Central American country or even Cuba could mount a worldwide propaganda campaign of this kind.”

Van Puyvelde praised the CIA for making nearly one million documents available online - and encouraged other nation’s intelligence agencies, including the UK’s, to follow suit.

He said: “Overall, it is quite remarkable that the CIA is making all of this material available online.

“By comparison, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) does not make its records available at The National Archives or its website.

“This is a missed opportunity to improve public understanding of intelligence.”