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Official reports, hearing transcripts, case files and releases: the paper behind the cases. 2,872 documents, 2,610 mirrored with their text, 53,529 pages indexed, so a search reads inside them and lands on the page.
New in the library The PURSUE files The Department of War's UAP release, mirrored in full: the videos, recordings and images, each beside its case file.Documents2,872 records · page 50
This FAA Form 8020-5 aircraft incident record, filed by Jerry Paterson of FAA office AAL-207 and dated January 26, 1987, covers Japan Airlines Flight 1628. The all-cargo Boeing 747 was flying from Keflavik, Iceland to Anchorage, Alaska on November 17, 1986, near Fort Yukon. The captain reported unidentified traffic at his altitude that stayed near the aircraft through a descent and turns. The traffic was seen on weather radar and at times by Anchorage Center and military radar. The attachments include crew interview transcripts, Captain Terauchi's drawing and ATC tapes.
This set of Federal Aviation Administration Alaskan Region news releases and notes, dated December 1986 to March 1987, covers the Japan Air Lines Flight 1628 sighting of November 17, 1986. It includes interview notes with Captain Kenjyu Terauchi's crew. The FAA said it could not confirm the event and attributed the second radar target to a split radar return from the 747. The releases also describe an Alaska Airlines weather radar sighting and Terauchi's January 1987 lights, which were attributed to ice crystals.
This compilation, released through The Black Vault, holds Federal Aviation Administration replies to John Greenewald, Jr.'s FOIA requests about the November 17, 1986 sighting involving flight JL1628. A June 2001 Alaskan Region letter offered about 107 pages outside FOIA and warned they would be destroyed. Letters from August and September 2009 say the records were destroyed under FAA Order 1350.15C. The only record found was a two-page ASIAS Brief Report noting unidentified traffic seen on radar by the crew and ATC near Fort Yukon.
This Brazilian Air Force (FAB) CENDOC file, released via The Black Vault, collects UFO papers from 1977 and 1978. It includes a Salvador Air Base transcription of a 16 December 1977 mission report, in which the crew of C-95 2162 near Vitória saw a large luminous ball and ATC described a mothership with smaller craft. It also holds Ann Schwinn's letter to President Geisel, forwarded with UFO Education Center material promoting George Adamski. Rounding out the file are 24th NORAD Region log extracts on the November 1975 Montana missile-site sightings and Brazilian press clippings.
This FAB CENDOC file, released through The Black Vault, holds material from 1978. Part of it is an issue of International UFO Reporter, edited by J. Allen Hynek, with a long report on the October 21, 1978 disappearance of pilot Fred Valentich over Bass Strait. That report includes his radio transcript, the search, and the competing explanations. The file also has a Brazilian newspaper clipping and a Fourth Regional Air Command investigation of a July 1978 landing report by eleven-year-old Dalton Legnaioli in Penha, São Paulo.
This is a reserved-classification compilation prepared at CINDACTA I in Brasília and signed by 1st Lt. Ademis Freitas, dated 6 August 1978, summarizing known UFO cases involving that air defense and traffic control center. It records pilot, controller and radar reports from 1977 to 1979 with star charts, deliberately without explanations or conclusions. It also includes I COMAR's register of UFO observations from Pará in 1977, including Colares and Santo Antônio do Tauá, plus 1978 O Estado do Pará press clippings.
This Brazilian Air Force CINDACTA file from 1978, released via The Black Vault, collects confidential reports on events at the DPV-DT/61 Gama site near Brasilia on the night of 20 June 1978. Officers, sergeants, soldiers and guards describe a silent, multicolored luminous object making fast maneuvers, along with stones thrown at the THF station and warning shots fired. Radar showed nothing conclusive. The file also contains air traffic control transcripts of airliner crews reporting luminous objects on 23 August and 6 December 1978.
This is an Internet Archive mirror of the FBI Vault web page for Majestic 12, captured on March 19, 2016. The page says that in 1988 two FBI offices received similar versions of a memo titled "Operation Majestic 12" that claimed to be a highly classified government document. The memo appeared to brief newly elected President Eisenhower on a secret committee formed to exploit a recovered extraterrestrial aircraft and hide that work from the public. An Air Force investigation found the document to be a fake.
This FBI file, mirrored by The Black Vault, collects Bureau records on the Majestic 12 document. It opens with a Dallas communication from 1988 about local publicity and a 1952 briefing paper for President-elect Eisenhower that claims a crashed disc and four bodies were recovered near Roswell. The file also holds a later FBIHQ teletype and a 1991 Salt Lake City airtel. The FBI teletype reports that Air Force OSI called the document fabricated and "completely bogus" and orders Dallas to close the case.
This FBI Dallas teletype, released through The Black Vault, was sent to the Director and the Cincinnati SAC. It reports that the Eighth Air Force had advised by telephone that an object purporting to be a flying disc had been recovered near Roswell, New Mexico. The object was hexagonal and hung by cable from a balloon about twenty feet in diameter, and it resembled a high altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector. The disc and balloon were being flown to Wright Field for examination.
This FBI teletype from the Dallas office went to the Director and the Cincinnati Special Agent in Charge and was recorded in July 1947. Eighth Air Force had told the Dallas office by telephone that an object said to be a flying disc was recovered near Roswell, New Mexico. The teletype says the object was hexagonal, hung by cable from a balloon about twenty feet across, and looked like a high altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector. It was being flown to Wright Field for examination.
This FBI file, released by The Black Vault, collects July 1947 Bureau memoranda, teletypes and newspaper clippings about flying disc reports. The memos record a disc found in a Twin Falls, Idaho back yard, a hexagonal object recovered near Roswell that Eighth Air Force said looked like a weather balloon with a radar reflector, and hoax discs at Laurel, Maryland, Black River Falls, Wisconsin, and Shreveport, Louisiana. It also contains Father Brasky's circular saw disc from Grafton, Wisconsin, and Kenneth Arnold's statement about his sighting.
This is section 1 of FBI headquarters file 62-HQ-83894 on flying discs, compiled in July and August 1947. It collects press clippings, including a report of a disc found by a priest in Grafton, Wisconsin, that a Milwaukee memo treats as a prank involving a circular saw. It also holds a Milwaukee report on a disc found near Black River Falls, a Portland teletype about a pilot's sighting over Myrtle Creek, Oregon, citizen letters, and Hoover's correspondence forwarding material to the War Department.
This FBI file section, serial 448 onward of 62-HQ-83894, gathers UFO correspondence from 1966 to 1977. It includes J. Edgar Hoover's reply to Florence C. Dow of Goffstown, New Hampshire, who had asked whether the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America was backed by communists. Her enclosed July 1966 issue of the AFSCA journal is also in the file. Later items are a 1977 Air Force UFO fact sheet on the end of Project Blue Book and a White House inquiry, to which the FBI replied that it has no jurisdiction over UFO sightings.
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.
This section of FBI file 62-HQ-83894 collects Bureau correspondence and memoranda on flying saucers from 1952 to 1954. It holds letters from the public, which J. Edgar Hoover forwarded to the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations, and a 1952 teletype about a saucer-shaped light over the Savannah River Plant. It also includes an FBI Laboratory examination of the burned cap of scoutmaster D. S. DesVergers, which found no identifying residue, and instructions to field offices to refer disc reports to the Air Force.
This section of FBI file 62-HQ-83894 collects Bureau correspondence on flying saucers from 1957 to 1966. It includes a 1957 memo on the rise in UFO reports after Sputnik, in which the Air Force told the FBI that the recent sightings were nonauthentic. It also holds a Havana report of a disc over Matahambre, Cuba, and inquiries about Robert T. Stone's Inter Continental Aerial Research Foundation and a Torrington, Connecticut sighting. Hoover's replies state that UFOs were never within FBI jurisdiction.
This FBI Central Records Center serial 153 from file 62-HQ-83894 comes from the Knoxville field office, file 65-11. It concerns "flying saucers" seen over the Oak Ridge area and is marked Internal Security - X. The enclosures sent to the Bureau were two photographs of reputed flying saucers seen at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in July 1947, and a copy of a Knoxville News-Sentinel clipping. The clipping reports that W. R. Presley photographed an apparent flying saucer over the mountain from his home.
This FBI file serial 164 in 62-HQ-83894 holds several copies of Air Intelligence Requirements Memorandum Number 4, "Unconventional Aircraft," issued 15 February 1949 by the Directorate of Intelligence, Headquarters United States Air Force. Major General C. P. Cabell signed it. It sets out continuing Air Force requirements for information on unconventional aircraft and unidentified flying objects, including "Flying Discs," and tells commands and outside agencies to send reports to the Air Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson AFB. It also lists detailed reporting questions on sightings, observers, radar data and physical evidence.
This FBI file serial is a 3 October 1966 memo from the Los Angeles office to the FBI Director about Issue No. 24 (July 1966) of Flying Saucers International, the journal of the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America. A Philadelphia IRS employee had sent the issue in, believing an article attributed to a being from the planet Korendor followed the Communist Party line. Los Angeles found no information on the article's recipient, Bob Renaud, and planned no further action. The file also contains the magazine, a convention program and news clippings.
This FBI file on Daniel Fry, released under FOI/PA with 33 pages withheld, collects 1963 memoranda between the New York and Los Angeles field offices. New York found a 1962 letter and agreement signed by Daniel W. Fry about articles for "Understanding" magazine. Los Angeles reported that Fry was president of the Understanding movement and was trying to set up a utopian community at Merlin, Oregon, and it enclosed his book "The White Sands Incident". None of the index references to him were derogatory.
This Federal Bureau of Investigation file on cattle mutilation collects correspondence and memos from 1974 to 1976. Senators Carl T. Curtis and Floyd K. Haskell asked the FBI to investigate livestock mutilations in Nebraska, Colorado and other states. Director Clarence M. Kelley replied that no Federal law within FBI jurisdiction had been violated, since there was no interstate transportation. The file also includes news clippings on UFO and helicopter reports, and a Fish and Wildlife Service view that the injuries are consistent with scavengers.
This FBI file release, date unknown, reproduces press coverage of cattle mutilations: a magazine report by Ed Sanders and a Newsweek article dated September 30, 1974. The material describes about 1,500 mutilated cattle across 22 states, helicopter sightings, and theories ranging from predators to satanic cults to UFOs. It details a 1975 federal investigation into informants A. Kenneth Bankston and Dan Dugan, whose claims about a satanic cult the investigators came to doubt. It records that the inquiry was then dropped without resolution.
This FBI file on animal mutilations brings together newspaper clippings, correspondence and New Mexico livestock and State Police reports from the 1970s. The clippings report cattle mutilations near Dulce, Cuba and Taos, including an orange light seen near Taos that left a powder with potassium and magnesium, the same elements found on marked cattle hides. Senator Harrison Schmitt's letter to rancher Manuel Gomez forwards State Police Chief Martin Vigil's 1978 reports and notes that Officer Gabe Valdez had found no positive leads.
This FBI file section compiles New Mexico State Police reports by Officer Gabe Valdez on 1978 cattle mutilations at Manuel Gomez's ranch near Dulce, a Los Alamos laboratory letter calling tissue findings inconclusive, and a December 1978 letter from Senator Harrison Schmitt asking the Justice Department to reopen an investigation. It also includes a Justice Department request that the FBI investigate 15 mutilations on Indian lands, and a report on an April 1979 Albuquerque conference that recommended central coordination of mutilation data.
This part of the FBI Animal Mutilation file covers 1979 to 1980 and includes FBI memoranda, letters to Senator Harrison Schmitt and Senate staff, and press clippings. At the Justice Department's request, the Albuquerque office investigated fifteen animal mutilations on Indian lands in New Mexico, but it did not identify anyone responsible. Kenneth Rommel, a former agent who directed the District Attorney's project, sent flakes from a pickup truck in Taos to the FBI Laboratory, which identified them as white exterior house paint.
This FBI file, a report from the Seattle field office to the FBI Director dated August 1947, covers the Maury Island flying disc story told by Fred Crisman and Harold Dahl. It says Kenneth Arnold looked into the story for Ray Palmer, and that Army Intelligence officers Davidson and Brown died when their B-25 crashed at Kelso carrying the supposed fragments. The FBI found no sign of sabotage. Crisman and Dahl admitted the material had no connection to discs, and the report names Crisman as the most likely anonymous caller.
This FBI file on Majestic 12 collects Bureau correspondence from 1988 to 1991 about copies of the alleged 18 November 1952 MJ-12 briefing for President-elect Eisenhower. The Dallas office asked whether the document was still classified. FBI headquarters replied that the Air Force Office of Special Investigations called it fabricated and completely bogus, and told Dallas to close the case. In 1991 Salt Lake City sent in another copy that had been found on a lobby floor, and the FBI asked OSI to identify who created it.
This FBI file on the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) holds records from 1956 to 1961. It includes press clippings, NICAP letters signed by Director Donald E. Keyhoe, and internal Bureau memoranda. It also contains Hoover's replies saying the FBI does not investigate UFO sightings and passes reports to the Air Force. Other items cover a 1960 Grand Blanc, Michigan moon photograph by Joe Perry, an Air Force officer's request to curb NICAP, and a citizen asking whether NICAP was Communist sponsored.
This FBI file on the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) covers correspondence and internal memos from 1961 to 1964. It contains citizen inquiries about the group, NICAP's reports about Dr. Frank E. Stranges implying he had FBI ties, and a request from New Orleans about an employee joining. The Bureau notes it never investigated NICAP. It calls some of director Donald Keyhoe's writing irresponsible and decides the FBI's name should not be connected with the organization.
This Federal Bureau of Investigation file section collects 1964 to 1968 correspondence about the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). It includes public letters, internal notes calling Donald Keyhoe's submissions irresponsible, and an Indianapolis recommendation against sending material to NICAP researcher Harry F. Koch. The FBI Laboratory declined to examine UFO photo negatives from Emerson, New Jersey, but its experts privately judged them likely trick photography. Other replies state that UFO matters fall outside FBI jurisdiction.
This FBI file gathers correspondence about Project Blue Book. In a January 1977 letter, the Department of the Air Force sent the FBI a UFO Fact Sheet. It says Blue Book ended on December 17, 1969, and found no evidence that UFOs posed a threat, used technology beyond known science or were extraterrestrial, and it lists 12,618 sightings, 701 of them unidentified. The file also contains 1989 letters from the civilian group calling itself 'the new Project Blue Book' to Director William Sessions, plus his reply that UFO investigation was never FBI responsibility.
This is the first part of an FBI file on flying discs, made up of internal memoranda, teletypes, letters from the public and news clippings from July and August 1947. Field offices report sightings and several objects that were recovered, including a disc found at Black River Falls, Wisconsin, and a North Hollywood device that Army G-2 called a hoax. Other items cover a Norfolk boy's photograph and the Tacoma plane crash tied to Dahl and Crisman. Director Hoover forwarded several letters to the War Department.
This FBI file section collects July 1947 Bureau memoranda, teletypes, citizen letters and newspaper clippings about reported flying discs. They cover recovered objects at Twin Falls, Idaho, Shreveport, Louisiana, Black River Falls, Wisconsin, and Laurel, Maryland, many judged to be pranks, plus a Grafton, Wisconsin priest's circular saw blade the Milwaukee office called a hoax. A Dallas teletype reports a disc recovered near Roswell resembling a high altitude weather balloon with radar reflector. Kenneth Arnold's own account of his sighting is also included.
This FBI file section, from 1947, gathers Army Air Forces counterintelligence reports and FBI memoranda about the summer's flying disc reports. It includes a Boise newspaper pilot's sworn statement describing a black object he filmed on 9 July 1947, interviews with a United Air Lines captain and a Hamilton Field soldier, and a Pan American crew's orange object near Boston. Other items cover the Tacoma disk fragment story, which was admitted to be false, the fatal B-25 crash at Kelso, a coded "Radio Ham" message dismissed as a hoax, and an Air Defense Command assessment that "something is really flying around."
This Federal Bureau of Investigation file section collects 1947 records on flying disc reports, including field office memoranda from Butte, Seattle, Salt Lake City and San Francisco on sightings in Washington, Montana, Utah and Idaho. Several were attributed to burnt paper or weather balloons, and Wright Field judged debris from a Danford, Illinois farm a hoax unconnected to Project Mogul. After the Army Air Forces described FBI work as chasing "ash can covers, toilet seats and whatnot," the Bureau discontinued its flying disc investigations and referred reports to the Air Forces.
This is part five of the FBI's UFO file, a set of Bureau memoranda and reports from 1947 to 1949. Most of it covers the FBI's inquiry into the Maury Island flying disc story in Tacoma, which concluded that the disc fragments were ordinary rock formations and that the story was a hoax. It also examines the fatal crash of a B-25 at Kelso and finds no sign of sabotage. The file includes other items: the Rhodes disc photographs, a proposed flying saucer convention in Alexandria, Louisiana, and ash from a fire near Scranton that someone suggested came from a flying saucer.
This Federal Bureau of Investigation file section collects 1947 to 1949 correspondence, memoranda and newspaper clippings about flying disc reports. It includes Hoover's replies to citizens, a Maine woman's account of a drifting object judged probably a weather balloon, a Richmond memo on a cigar-shaped object seen over Radford, Virginia on May 12, 1949, clippings on the Chiles and Whitted sighting near Montgomery, a Flyin' Saucer toy promotion, and agent interviews with witnesses in Vermont and a pilot near Bethel, Alaska.
This FBI file section collects Bureau correspondence on flying discs from 1947 to 1950. It includes a Portland field office memo on police officers who saw a silvery object over the city on September 11, 1947, and letters from citizens with sightings, theories and questions, along with Hoover's form replies. There is also a Chicago memo about a letter describing a secret saucer bomber, and a Louisville report on Al Hixenbaugh's June 1950 film of a disk. Other items include a Yuba City informant's drawings of a supposed Russian saucer and a note on Donald Keyhoe's book.
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.
This Federal Bureau of Investigation file section collects 1949 and 1952 memoranda and public letters about flying saucers. Letters from citizens offering theories were acknowledged and forwarded to the Air Force, and Hoover passed along a report of objects over Thessalon Lake, Ontario, along with an anonymous German letter about a V-weapon disc. An Air Intelligence briefing said research had reached no satisfactory conclusion. Memos also trace how the negatives of a 1947 Phoenix disc photograph were handed to Air Force Intelligence.
This Federal Bureau of Investigation file section compiles 1950 to 1952 reports of unidentified aerial objects shared with the FBI. Most of it is an Air Force OSI investigation, dated May 12, 1952, into Donald Stewart's claim that a disc hovered over his car on Ritchie Highway near Baltimore. His companion George Tyler III later admitted he saw nothing. The file also covers disks seen at the Savannah River Plant, radar and visual sightings over Oak Ridge, a Fairbanks, Alaska jet pilot report, and an Ashland, Kentucky sighting.
This part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's UFO file collects FBI and Air Force correspondence from about 1950 to 1953. It includes an Air Force OSI district summary of aerial phenomena in New Mexico from December 1948 to May 1950, which reports that green fireballs occurred near sensitive installations and remained unexplained. It also holds a 1950 sighting of an orange sphere by a New Haven chemical engineer, a report from jet pilots near Fairbanks, a Los Alamos reporting form, and 1953 memos on sighting tips that the FBI passed on without investigating.
This FBI file section contains a 20 January 1953 letter from the Johnson County, Indiana civil defense office asking J. Edgar Hoover whether the International Flying Saucer Bureau was subversive, with an enclosed issue of its bulletin Space Review. It also holds 1956 FBI memoranda and letters to Air Force investigators on a Van Nuys landing claim, a bright light seen from Oxford, Pennsylvania, and a low spinning object seen near Henderson, North Carolina. In each case the FBI took no action.
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.
This FBI file release, Part 14 of the Bureau's UFO file, collects correspondence and memoranda from 1960 to 1968. Much of it concerns Joseph Perry of Grand Blanc, Michigan, whose moon photograph appeared to show a saucer-like object. The FBI passed the slides to Air Force OSI at Selfridge AFB and said repeatedly that it was not investigating. The file also covers a Denver lecture about space people, an anonymous Dallas informant, a NICAP subcommittee, and form replies stating that UFOs fall outside FBI jurisdiction.
This part of an FBI file holds a July 1967 letter sent to Director J. Edgar Hoover by a reporter for UFO Contact, the journal of the International Get Acquainted Program (IGAP), along with a copy of the magazine, dedicated to George Adamski. The magazine includes an editorial praising Adamski, an open letter to Queen Juliana of the Netherlands, and Ronald Caswell's account of contactee Fred Steckling's European lecture tour and his film of a UFO formation. The file also contains AFSCA newsletter items and an advertisement for AFSCA's 1966 Reno convention.
This Federal Bureau of Investigation file section collects 1949 Army intelligence reports of unidentified aerial objects seen around Camp Hood, Texas, forwarded by the San Antonio office, which told the Director it was reviewing and destroying such reports unless they held FBI interest. It also has 1957 FBI liaison memoranda on a radar-tracked object near Montauk Point and Benton, Pennsylvania, judged unlikely to be a Soviet operation. The file also includes a civilian Flying Saucer Researchers release arguing that saucers probably come from Mars.
This is an FBI Freedom of Information/Privacy Acts release on Silas Newton. It includes a 1951 internal memo about inquiries from the California Attorney General's office. That office asked about Newton because he was cited as an authority in Frank Scully's 1950 book "Behind the Flying Saucers." The FBI reported that Newton had a 1936 New York arrest for grand larceny. It also recommended telling California that Lee Gebauer may be Lee Julius Arnold Gebauer, who was convicted in federal court at Tucson in 1944.
This FBI Freedom of Information Act release on Silas M. Newton contains 1951 correspondence between the California Attorney General's office and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The state office cited Newton as the source for Frank Scully's book "Behind the Flying Saucers" and suspected he was running a large hoax or swindle. Hoover replied that the FBI had not investigated Newton on that matter. An internal note says OSI called the book's claims "hogwash" and that San Francisco agents contacted the state office.