Documents / FOIA release
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.
“Office of Special Investigations”12 pages
On 5-21-64 the Department of Defense delivered at the Bureau a manuscript by captioned individual entitled "Let's Challenge the UFO (Unidentified Flying Objects) Censors." The Department of the Army, according to the transmittal form from the Department of Defense, has no objection to the publication of the article. The FBI's attention was directed to page 6. Also included with the manuscript was a copy of the author's transmittal letter to the Department of the Army stating he would like to know the name, rank/grade, title and office of each person who actually conducts the review of this article. A review of the article revealed it is a criticism of the Department of Defense's policy with regard to issuing clearances of articles relative to Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO), particularly when the author is employed by the U.S. Army as in the case of Bryant. The article is in essence a history of problems in getting articles published on UFO. References to the FBI are as follows: On page 2, indicates he will reveal the role played by the FBI in monitoring UFO research activities of Army civilian employees. On page 6, refers to his being interviewed on 9-17-63 by Special Agent of our Norfolk Office. States SA contacted him in response to a letter of 7-23-63 to the Sheriff of Sussex County, Virginia, requesting UFO sighting data. Alleged that SA inquired about a letter to the Commander of the Norfolk, Virginia, Naval Base. Claims he asked SA if it was customary for the FBI to question people who expressed an interest in UFO. SA replied in the negative and added that "Since his office was queried by the addressees of the two letters he was just seeking information on which he could write a 'memorandum for the files.'" Also states that SA volunteered the following: "If the FBI has any such data (on UFO sightings), it is probably of an intelligence nature and thus would be unavailable to the public and to private individuals." ## INFORMATION IN BUREAU FILES: Bureau files reveal an inquiry from 1959, regarding the investigation of UFO. He was informed the FBI does not investigate matters of this nature; the jurisdiction of UFO is within the Department of the Air Force. 1 - Mr. Tolson - Mr. Sullivan 1 - Mr. DeLoach 1 - Ldaison Section IMM:par (7) ENCLOSURE JUN 8 1954 CRIME RESEARCH
FOIA release, from the fbi-vault collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 148 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.