Documents / FOIA release

FBI file: UFO, UFO Part 13

Federal Bureau of Investigation · 148 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This Federal Bureau of Investigation file section collects 1954 to 1961 correspondence and memoranda about flying saucers. Most of it concerns the Detroit Flying Saucer Club, which the Detroit office reported on from informants and chose not to investigate, while Bureau headquarters said saucer matters belonged to the Air Force. It also includes public letters to J. Edgar Hoover, a 1955 North Carolina sighting report, Leonard Stringfield's 1961 anonymous warning call, and policy reviews that restate the practice of referring reports to the Air Force.

  • p. 41 …be disseminated by the Bureau to OSI headquarters and to the Department. Copies of the enclosures…
  • p. 98 …This included a letter to the Commanding Officer, Headquarters, Aircraft Fleet, Atlantic U. S. Naval Base…
  • p. 100 …We return first to 1958, to Fort Monroe, Va., headquarters of the U. S. Continental Army…
  • p. 102 …Attempts to extract UFO data from this headquarters USCONARC cannot be met. Suggest contact be made…
  • p. 129 …directed a letter to Commanding Officer, Headquarters, Aircraft Fleet, Marine Force Atlantic, U. S. Naval Base…
  • p. 141 …report sightings of unidentified objects to the headquarters, Air Defense Command, at Columbus, Ohio. He stated…

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

Your letter of January 20th has been received.

In response to your inquiry, the FBI has not conducted an investigation as you mentioned inasmuch as this would not come within our investigative jurisdiction. The presence of an Agent was simply to determine whether or not any violation may have occurred in which the FBI would have an interest, and for no other reason.

While I would like to be of assistance to you, the files of the FBI must be maintained as confidential in accordance with regulations of the Department of Justice and are available for official use only. In view of this, I am sure you will understand why I cannot be of any further assistance in this instance.

Sincerely yours,

2. Edgar Hoover

Cases discussed

About this file

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. 148 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.