Shutterstock
Newly declassified CIA documents show the U.S. government spent decades searching for Noah’s Ark — the biblical vessel described in Genesis — while consistently denying public access to satellite and spy plane images of the search area by labeling them classified.
According to the Bible, Noah constructed the massive boat after God warned of a worldwide flood intended to cleanse Earth of human wickedness. The vessel reportedly housed Noah’s family alongside pairs of every animal species, protecting them during the 40-day deluge.
The CIA’s interest centered on a location 18 miles south of Mount Ararat in Turkey. Genesis 8:4 specifically mentions this geographical connection: “And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat.”
Government searches for the biblical vessel date back to at least 1957.
Between 1974 and 1982, the intelligence agency intensified its efforts after the Director of Central Intelligence requested satellite surveillance of the area searching for evidence of the Ark. Lt. Col. Walter Brown, a high-ranking Air Force official, separately asked the CIA to develop advanced technology for examining satellite photography of Mount Ararat to determine “whether any evidence of the Ark could be found,” DailyMail.com reports.
During the subsequent eight years, the documents reveal the CIA logged 10 additional requests about Mount Ararat and Noah’s Ark from prominent government-connected individuals — including members of Congress, a former astronaut, and several officials from the DCI’s Intelligence Community Staff.
Despite claiming they’d found no evidence of the Ark, the agency consistently denied numerous Freedom of Information Act requests for the surveillance photos, maintaining their classified status.
The mystery deepened this March when scientists from Istanbul Technical University, Agri Ibrahim Cecen University, and Andrews University in the United States claimed to have discovered fossilized remains of a massive vessel at the same Mount Ararat location.
“Our studies show that this region harbored life in that period and that, at some point, it was covered by water, which reinforces the possibility that a catastrophic event of great magnitude occurred,” the research team stated.
Whether the CIA knows more about Noah’s Ark than they’ve publicly acknowledged — similar to theories about the Ark of the Covenant — remains uncertain. The full truth behind these classified searches may never fully come to light.
