12/30/2023 0 Comments 1970s soldier of fortune magazineOn this episode of Inside the FBI, we sat down with the FBI’s historian to uncover the truth about some of our noteworthy cases involving unidentified flying objects, or UFOs. Monica Grover: Since 1947, concerned citizens have been alerting the FBI to a variety of strange objects they’ve spotted in the sky. … No doubt this was someone’s idea of a prank.” Transcript of the latest FBI Podcastįor the purposes of this episode, we often use the original, commonly known term unidentified flying objects (or UFOs) to refer to what are now called unidentified aerial phenomena (or UAPs). It is an old wooden platter, which has assembled on it a silver plate,Ī spark plug, a timer, and some old brass tubing. Edgar Hoover that “the alleged flying disc was obtained and it is apparently the concoction of The Springfield special agent in charge informed FBI Director J. The mystery remains… In late July 1947, a woman in Illinois reported to the FBI office in Springfield that she found theįlying disc pictured above in her front yard. Some people believe the memo repeats a hoax that was circulating at that time, but the Bureau’s files have no information to verify that theory. That practice ended in July 1950, four months after the Hottel memo, suggesting that our Washington Field Office didn’t think enough of that flying saucer story to look into it.įinally, the Hottel memo does not prove the existence of UFOs it is simply a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated. For a few years after the Roswell incident, Director Hoover did order his agents-at the request of the Air Force-to verify any UFO sightings. Third, as noted in an earlier story, the FBI has only occasionally been involved in investigating reports of UFOs and extraterrestrials. The FBI file on Roswell (another popular page) is posted elsewhere on the Vault. There is no reason to believe the two are connected. Second, the Hottel memo is dated nearly three years after the infamous events in Roswell in July 1947. It was first released publicly in the late 1970s and had been posted on the FBI website for several years prior to the launch of the Vault. So what’s the real story? A few facts to keep in mind:įirst, the Hottel memo isn’t new. The resulting stories went viral, and traffic to the new Vault soared. But when we launched the Vault in April 2011, some media outlets noticed the Hottel memo and erroneously reported that the FBI had posted proof of a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico and the recovery of wreckage and alien corpses. That might have been the end of this particular story, just another informational dead end in the FBI files. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots.”Īfter relaying an informant’s claim that the saucers had been found because the government’s “high-powered radar” in the area had interfered with “the controlling mechanism of the saucers,” the memo ends simply by saying that “o further evaluation was attempted” concerning the matter by the FBI agent. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. “They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. It related a story told to one of our agents by a third party who said an Air Force investigator had reported that three “flying saucers” were recovered in New Mexico. The subject of the memo was anything but ordinary. Edgar Hoover and recorded and indexed in FBI records. Like all memos to FBI Headquarters at that time, it was addressed to Director J. (see sidebar below for a brief biography). It was authored by Guy Hottel, then head of our field office in Washington, D.C. The file in question is a memo dated March 22, 1950-63 years ago last week. Yet, it is only a single page, relaying an unconfirmed report that the FBI never even followed up on. Over the past two years, this file has been viewed nearly a million times. It’s the most popular file in the FBI Vault-our high-tech electronic reading room housing various Bureau records released under the Freedom of Information Act.
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