Federal Bureau of Investigation
FBI ‘UFO’ file (flying disc reports, 1947 onward)
Case file · written July 1947 · released April 2011
Why this matters
The FBI's main file on 'flying discs', opened during the 1947 sighting wave when the Army Air Forces asked the Bureau to help vet reports. It shows the FBI collecting citizen accounts and then pulling back from the work as it came to suspect it was doing the military's legwork. A primary record of how a federal agency handled public panic about unknown aircraft.
Read the original
https://vault.fbi.gov/UFO
Hosted by FBI Vault
Tags
Part of a collection · step 1 of 16
Declassified UFO Programs
1947: the FBI is asked to help vet 'flying disc' reports.
Cite
Federal Bureau of Investigation. "FBI ‘UFO’ file (flying disc reports, 1947 onward)." July 1947. Released April 2011. https://vault.fbi.gov/UFO (accessed via The Quiet Archive, QA-0007).
Shelved nearby
- 1947 QA-0008FBI · Memo
Roswell UFO: FBI Dallas teletype of 8 July 1947
The FBI's contemporaneous teletype on the Roswell debris, sent the day the base announced it had recovered a 'flying disc'.
- 1950 QA-0006FBI · Memo
Guy Hottel memo on ‘flying saucers’ recovered in New Mexico
A one-page memo from the head of the FBI's Washington field office passing along a second-hand story that three 'flying saucers', each holding small bodies, had been recovered in New Mexico.
- 1988 QA-0009FBI · Case file
Majestic 12: FBI investigation of the MJ-12 documents
When documents describing a secret 'Majestic 12' UFO-recovery committee began circulating in the late 1980s, the FBI looked into whether classified information had leaked.
- 1947 QA-0019USAF · Collection
Project BLUE BOOK — Unidentified Flying Objects (NARA holdings)
NARA's guide to the Air Force's 1947–1969 UFO investigation files: more than 12,000 sighting reports, most of them explained, plus 701 never identified.