A NASA insider’s old allegation that UFO images were removed from agency photographs before public release has resurfaced after renewed attention on Donna Hare, a former NASA contractor who said a technician told her unusual objects were routinely airbrushed out of pictures bound for the public. Hare said the exchange happened in 1970 or 1971 while she was working at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Hare first took the claim public at the Disclosure Project press conference in Washington in May 2001 and repeated it in later interviews, but the original image, the technician’s name and any written NASA policy have never been produced. IBTimes UK could not independently verify Hare’s account, so the allegation should be treated with caution.

How the NASA Insider’s UFO Photos Story Took Shape
Hare said she worked for NASA contractor Philco Ford Aerospace from 1967 to 1981 and had security clearance that allowed her into restricted areas linked to photographic work. According to her account, a friend in the photo lab showed her an image of a round white object with sharply defined edges hanging above a field of pine trees, the sort of detail she said she had never seen before in an ordinary photograph.

When she asked if it was a UFO, Hare said the technician replied, ‘I can’t tell you that.’ She later recalled pressing him on what would happen to the image and said he answered, ‘well, we always have to airbrush them out before we sell them to the public.’ That is the hinge of the entire claim, and also the problem with it.

Her account carried weight in UFO circles because she presented herself not as a casual observer but as someone who had worked inside a highly controlled environment. Still, even on her own version of events, she did not keep the photograph, did not name the technician and did not point to any surviving document that could settle the matter.