As often happens with many odd stories, the case of the Mount Ararat anomaly is one that has drawn in the CIA for decades.

The Ararat anomaly is the alleged discovery of a strange rock formation of what many believe to be Noah’s ark, covered over by glacial ice and snow for centuries. One of the best detailed analysis of many claims regarding the Ararat anomaly actually comes from the CIA itself, in a document released to the public only in 2002.

According to this document, the CIA first encountered claims about this anomaly when DCI Colby sent a letter to the science and technology division of the CIA in 1974, asking whether there was any evidence in the Top Secret classified satellite surveillance photography showing the existence of Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat.

The formation is located on the Western Plateau of the mountain at approximately 15,500 feet. According to most accounts, the U.S. Air Force first captured images of the strange object in 1949 during military surveillance operations.

Numerous agencies have captured images of the object, such as Landsat in the 70s, the French SPOT satellite in 1989, and even the NASA space shuttle in 1994. Of course, the CIA had been capturing highly-detailed images of the area through satellite surveillance as early as the 1970s and throughout the 1990s.

To this day, there remains not a single ground-level image of the object; even though countless individuals have claimed to have visited the site and that they saw the object with their own eyes.









CIA Evidence of the Ararat Anomaly

Declassified documents reveal an agency pestered through the decades with repeat requests for evidence of Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat. The agency insisted time and time again that there is no such evidence.

On May 21st, 1974, DS&T informed DCI Colby that U-2 photography of the area acquired on September 1957 or any other imagery did not show any evidence of Noah’s Ark.

The same year, Congressman Bob Wilson asked for aerial photographs of the mountain to be released to a Dr. John Morris, head of the Institute of Creation Research of San Diego, California. The Agency responded that the 1957 U-2 photos were still “Confidential”.

Even members of the intelligence community with appropriate clearances to view “Confidential” information were informed that the evidence just wasn’t there. Such was the case of Admiral Showers, who was informed that “a search had been made of aerial photography with negative results.”

This internal document reveals that even though the Agency was telling the public that the photos were classified, they were actively searching all of the U-2 and satellite imagery for evidence of Noah’s Ark, yet they could not find any. When provided with a ground photo from Captain Howard Schue that showed “a long range view of the purported Ark”, analysts again tried to find the object in satellite imagery, and failed.