1978 Tarija UFO Crash
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Evidence quality · 6 components
Behavioral anomalousness · 4 components
TL;DR
A Secretary of State Cyrus Vance telex explicitly ruled out all known re-entering space objects for the May 6, 1978 Tarija event, Project Moon Dust officers Colonel Robert Simmons and Major John Heise were dispatched from the US Embassy in La Paz, and the Smithsonian confirmed it was not a meteorite - making this one of the best-documented cases of a US government crash-retrieval program response to an officially unexplained aerial event.
Confirmed
- ✓Hundreds to thousands of witnesses including two on-duty Argentine border police officers observed a metallic object with a smoke trail impact El Taire mountain on May 6, 1978
- ✓Secretary of State Cyrus Vance signed a telex on May 18, 1978 stating 'no direct correlation with known space objects that may have reentered the earth's atmosphere near May 6 can be made'
- ✓Five declassified US State Department documents confirm Project Moon Dust officers Colonel Robert Simmons and Major John Heise were dispatched to Tarija
- ✓The Smithsonian Scientific Event Alert Network confirmed no meteorite fall on record for the Bolivia-Argentina border in May 1978
Unresolved
- ?Whether any physical object was recovered - the Police Chief of Tarija's reported description of a 'dull metallic cylinder twelve feet long with a few dents' was never independently confirmed or the object publicly displayed
- ?What Project Moon Dust personnel actually found and whether any material was removed from Bolivia without public disclosure
- ?Why the CIA produced its own classified document ('Bolivia Reports Conflict On Details Of Fallen Object') if the event was merely a foreign satellite re-entry
Strongest mundane explanation
An untracked piece of Soviet or US satellite debris re-entered over the Bolivia-Argentina border on May 6, 1978 - consistent with Project Moon Dust's primary mandate of recovering Soviet hardware - but Secretary Vance's explicit 'no correlation with known space objects' finding argues against any tracked debris, and an untracked piece would not ordinarily trigger a CIA document and a Secretary of State-level cable.
On May 6, 1978, hundreds to thousands of witnesses across Bolivia and northern Argentina observed a large luminous cylindrical object streaking through the sky before impacting El Taire mountain near the Bermejo River. The sonic boom shattered windows within a 30-mile radius. Within days, two U.S. Air Force officers from the American Embassy in La Paz arrived under Project Moon Dust, the classified program for recovering foreign and anomalous aerospace objects. A declassified telex signed by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance explicitly stated that no known re-entering space objects correlated with the event. No wreckage was ever publicly recovered or presented, but the Police Chief of Tarija described a 'dull metallic cylinder twelve feet long with a few dents' at the site. Five declassified U.S. State Department documents confirm the official American response.
Key Facts
- ›Date: May 6, 1978, approximately 4:15-4:30 p.m. local time
- ›Impact site: El Taire mountain near the Bermejo River, on the Bolivia-Argentina border southwest of Tarija city
- ›Sonic boom from the impact was heard up to 150 miles (240 km) away; windows shattered within a 30-mile radius
- ›Estimated 500+ witnesses at a local soccer match in Aguas Blancas, Argentina (on the border), plus thousands more across the region
- ›Two Argentine border police officers Eduardo Salmon and Bienvenido Ortega observed a metallic oval object trailing smoke
- ›Bolivia's Air Force scrambled three AT-6 aircraft to reconnoiter; Argentina's 20th Border Police unit was dispatched to search for wreckage
- ›Bolivia formally requested NASA assistance
- ›Two U.S. Air Force officers (Colonel Robert Simmons and Major John Heise) arrived in Tarija under Project Moon Dust / Operation Blue Fly
- ›A declassified telex signed by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance (May 18, 1978) stated: 'No direct correlation with known space objects that may have reentered the earth's atmosphere near May 6 can be made'
- ›The Smithsonian Scientific Event Alert Network confirmed the object was not a meteorite
- ›Police Chief of Tarija reportedly described recovered object as a 'dull metallic cylinder twelve feet long with a few dents' - never independently confirmed
- ›Five declassified U.S. State Department documents confirm the American military response