Documents / Official release
This Federal Bureau of Investigation file section (62-HQ-83894, Section 4) collects 1947 to 1949 correspondence on flying discs. It includes Portland police officers' accounts of a silvery object over the city on September 11, 1947, an Alaska pilot's July 1947 sighting near Bethel, citizen letters answered by J. Edgar Hoover, and a 1948 Air Defense Command directive on disc investigations. The FBI replied that it was conducting no flying disc investigations. Later items concern William Albert Rhodes's disc photographs and a Los Angeles letter judged a probable prank.
From the source:Release of 2026-05-08 Incident: N/A, N/A. The FBI's 62-HQ-83894 case file includes investigative records, eyewitness testimonies, and public reports concerning Unidentified Flying Objects and flying discs documented between June 1947 and July 1968. The records include high-profile incident accounts, photographic evidence from sites like Oak Ridge, TN, and technical proposals regarding potential propulsion systems. Additional topics include convention programs, researcher accounts, and extensive media coverage from the period. This file is partially posted on FBI vault with more redactions and some pages missing. Included here is the complete case file with several newly declassified pages and only minor redactions.
v ' .> C 0.. • •p y Benkelman, Nebraska Ma re h 14, 1948 Mr. Kenneth Wherry United States Senate Washington , D. c. Dear Ur . Wherry: On March 13 at 2:30, M.S.T. o'clock in the afternoon I witnessed a strange sight in the sky traveling at a very high rate of speed at a very high altitude. I was first attracted to this sight by a noise of motor or whatever it was. It sound_ to me like that of a train r~mbling in the distance of from 10 t~ 12 miles on a still day. At first glance it looked like it might be a vapor trail left by a high flying plane. But the white streak that was in the sky never changed its shape or did it change in the di recti on of travel. It traveled much faster than any plane I have seen traveling in sky high enough to leave vapor trai 1. As near as I can describe this sight was that it might appear to be a stream lined train traveling at a very high altitude at very high rate of speed. This rocket or whatever it might have been was high enough to disappear from sight while it was yet very far above the hori2on. I am not writing this so that it might seem to be another disc, fan or whatever you might call them . I just saw this and it has been on my mind ans I thought if there was anything that I could be of help to solve this thin g I would write this to you and you can forward this to the proper Dept. if it is necessary. Thanking you kindly Yours Truly /s/ Kenneth ~Frasier &JCLOSUREP.S. This object was traveling from east to west . It looked 1i ke it might have trave led over Denver,
Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 214 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.