Documents / FOIA release
This Federal Bureau of Investigation file release gathers memos, teletypes and letters from 1949 and 1950 on flying saucer reports. Most of it covers a March 1950 claim by a Knoxville radio technician that his surplus APN-7 radar detected an object over Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Navy radar never confirmed the object, and Air Force examiners judged his equipment unreliable. Other items include a cardboard saucer hoax near Elmira, New York, a pilot's 1949 formation sighting in Oregon and a Denver claim of a crashed disc.
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
On the morning of March 7, 1930, Special Agent of this office was advised by U.S. AEC Security Division, of steps taken by AEC in this regard. Mr. stated that immediately upon receiving the report from me, he had made the matter known to the proper authorities at AEC and early the following morning he had conversed with Colonel 3rd Army Headquarters, Atlanta, Georgia, and apprised him of the matter. Mr. stated he also conversed with 14th Air Force Headquarters at Greenville, South Carolina and advised them of the matter. He stated that this was strictly in accordance with the plans drawn up between AEC and the armed forces for protection against air or land assault. He continued that the AEC has neither the facilities nor the equipment with which to defend itself in such emergencies and that such responsibility had been assumed by these agencies of the military forces. It would appear from the manner in which this incident was handled that despite the fact that all agencies seemed to be operating in the manner prescribed by agreement, and although each was apprised of the action being taken by the other and cooperating in every respect, there nevertheless seemed to be an impressive lack of any agency actually taking the responsibility for the situation and taking any action to verify or disprove the threat. Had a similar incident occurred wherein an actual threat against the physical security of the AEC Installation had been experienced, it is not implausible to believe that a similar confused fixing of final authority would have been found. It should be noted that many hours elapsed from the receiving of the first report until such time as Mr. reasonable conclusion would be reached concerning the matter and nothing of a positive nature with regard to any action being taken had been had during all that time. While it is now felt that this entire matter was in a manner of speaking "dry run", it nevertheless varrants some consideration from a procedural standpoint and might be worthy of discussion at some liaison meeting in the future. The Bureau will be immediately advised if there are any further developments in this matter.
FOIA release, from the fbi-vault collection. 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. 66 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.