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FBI file 62-HQ-83894, section 5

Department of War · 209 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This section of FBI file 62-HQ-83894 collects Bureau correspondence on flying disks from 1949 and 1950. Most of it concerns a letter to Walter Winchell, passed on by Ernest Cuneo, from Peter Camerlon Jones, who said he saw a top-shaped silver object in the mountains near Los Angeles in August 1947. Los Angeles agents could not find Jones, and Hoover suggested the letter might be a prank. The file also holds a Navy intelligence report on 6 or 7 discs seen over southern Oregon on 27 May 1949, plus letters from members of the public about Chicago and Toronto.

  • p. 99 …That project then was taken over by the Navy in wartime. Much more advanced models now…
  • p. 101 …It all points to a big advance in the science of flying. Surface indications, then, point…
  • p. 157 …Many theories have been advanced to explain these reports of aerial phenomena over the US. These…
  • p. 160 …official attitude toward the matter? I wish to thank you in advance for your interest and…

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

While it is not possible to categorically rule out theory No.1 it is very easy to do so on reasonable grounds. The existence of any form of life on other planets is extremely tenuous and debatable. The level of technical achievement required to launch piloted or pilotless missiles from one planet to another and return is several orders of magnitude byond that existing on the earth today and probably would have resulted in some firm contact prior to this, either through deliberate landings or unscheduled crashes. (Even these have been reported in the press - complete with descriptions of men only 18 inches tall! Such reports are sheer fabrication.)

There is absolutely no evidence that the Soviet Union possess either guided missiles or disc shaped aircraft capable of making round trip flights to the US, and the use of atomic energy for the propulsion of any serial vehicle is still at least several years in the future. Even if the Soviets are that far ahead of us in such a program, there is no reason to expect the airplanes would be other than of conventional design. An atomic power plant, alone, would be sufficiently radical, without also designing a completely new vehicle to carry it.

The US is not experimenting with any new weapon that could reasonably be mistakenly identified as a flying disc or saucer. The US is launching large numbers of meteorological and cosmic ray balloons for experimental purposes and a fair number of the reports can be definitely attributed to sightings of these objects or reflections of other shiny objects such as aircraft.

The continued reporting of aerial phenomena must then be attributed to a mass hysteria caused by the present tenseness in the international situation; the public belief in the ability of science to accomplish miracles; and to statements in the press by "name" individuals hinting at

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Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 209 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.