FBI denials of UFO interest

FBI denials of UFO interest

Agency	Federal Bureau of Investigation
Standard reply	UFOs are "not and never has been" within the FBI's investigative jurisdiction (1966); the FBI "does not collect information regarding UFO sightings in general" (1974)
The record	Agreed in July 1947 to help Army Air Forces Intelligence investigate flying discs (Bureau Bulletin No. 42)
Withdrawal	Bureau Bulletin No. 57, 1 October 1947: refer reports to the Air Forces, no investigation
Later practice	Field offices took reports and passed them to the Air Force
Files	Released under FOIA; on the FBI's online Vault; further releases in May 2026
Date	21 July 1966
Topics	Crashes & retrievals (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic)
Testimony	Shellenberger testimony, p. 68
Year	1966 in UFO history
Timeline	1966 on the UAP Timeline
Sources	12

For decades the FBI told members of the public who wrote about UFOs that the subject was outside its jurisdiction. It also said it did not collect UFO reports.^[2][7] Its own files show a more complicated history. The Bureau helped the Army Air Forces investigate sightings in 1947, and its field offices went on receiving reports and passing them to the Air Force for years afterwards.^[1][2][7] One standard reply, that UFOs were "not and never has been" an FBI matter, is contradicted by the Bureau's own 1947 bulletins.^[1][7]

1947

In July 1947 Brigadier General George F. Schulgen of Army Air Forces Intelligence asked the FBI to help investigate the wave of "flying disc" reports.^[1] The internal exchanges ran as follows:^[1]

• Ladd's objection. Assistant Director D. M. Ladd recommended declining, since "a great bulk" of the discs reported found had been pranks.
• Hoover's condition. J. Edgar Hoover wrote on the memo: "I would do it but before agreeing to it we must insist upon full access to discs recovered. For instance in the La. case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination."
• Schulgen's assurance. Schulgen promised "complete cooperation" and that all recovered discs would be made available to FBI agents.
• His suspicion. He suggested the reports might have been started by "subversive individuals for the purpose of creating a mass hysteria", possibly by Communist sympathisers hoping to stir fear of a secret Russian weapon.

Bureau Bulletin No. 42 of 30 July 1947 announced that the Bureau had agreed to cooperate. It told agents to investigate each sighting brought to their attention, "to ascertain whether or not it is a bona fide sighting, an imaginary one or a prank", and noted the Air Forces' concern about subversives.^[1] Field offices duly interviewed witnesses. In August 1947 the Norfolk office interviewed a schoolboy who had photographed an object, and the Portland office learned that metal "disc" fragments came from a Tacoma slag mill.^[1][5]

The cooperation was short-lived. A 1958 FBI summary of Bureau policy records what happened:^[7]

• The Air Force letter. A letter of 3 September 1947 from Air Defense Command showed the Air Force had intended its own staff to interview credible witnesses. The FBI would chase the discs "found on ground", which had turned out to be "trash can covers, toilet seats and what not".
• The protest. On 27 September the FBI told the Air Force its personnel "could not be dissipated in this manner".
• The withdrawal. Bureau Bulletin No. 57 of 1 October 1947 instructed that "all future reports connected with flying discs should be referred to the Air Forces and no investigative action should be taken by Bureau Agents".

An Air Defense Command directive of 4 February 1948 still told its numbered air forces to coordinate disc investigations with the local FBI office. Hoax reports were to be sent to the FBI office concerned.^[11]

The denials

The Bureau's later replies to the public moved from "we refer them" to "never our business":^[2][7]

• 1952. A visitor from the Netherlands was told the matter "was not within the Jurisdiction of the FBI", though his information was passed to the Air Force.
• 26 September 1958. A letter to NICAP's director, Donald Keyhoe, said the FBI "does not investigate sightings", that reports it received were forwarded to the Air Force, and that its agents did not tell witnesses to keep quiet.
• 1960. The Bureau confirmed there had been "no change in our policy", and told a Detroit inquirer that it "does not investigate" such cases.
• 22 January 1964. Hoover wrote that the FBI had conducted no such investigation, "inasmuch as this would not come within our investigative jurisdiction".
• 20–21 July 1966. Hoover's replies to correspondents said "the investigation of Unidentified Flying Objects is not and never has been a matter that is within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI". One added that "the FBI has never had custody of an occupant from a foreign planet". A Bureau official repeated the same formula to a television writer in October 1966.
• 10 October 1974. The researcher Larry W. Bryant had asked the Chicago office about an Army report on a 1954 sighting whose distribution list included that office. The special agent in charge, Richard G. Held, replied that the FBI had no information on it and "does not collect information regarding UFO sightings in general". It could investigate only matters Congress had assigned to it, and "UFO sightings are not such matters".
• 1977. An internal memo found "no conceivable jurisdiction" for FBI inquiries into a sighting. Such information would be "referred to the Department of the Air Force without any action".

What the files show

The same 1967–1974 Chicago file opens with a memo of 22 September 1967. In it a special agent records a telephone report from an 11-year-old boy who heard a "weird" noise and saw a "flash of light going north in the sky". The agent passed it to a sergeant at the Air Force's 755th Radar Squadron in Arlington Heights, Illinois.^[2] Other records show further contacts:^[7][8][9]

• Monitoring groups. Field offices kept watch on flying-saucer clubs, such as a Detroit group in 1954 that informants feared was a cover for subversion.
• The Phoenix negatives. The Phoenix office explained to a newspaper that negatives it had borrowed from a witness in 1947 had gone straight to Air Force intelligence.
• Recalled reply. One correspondent wrote in 1966 that the Bureau had once told him agents investigated reported landings "to determine whether any Federal law had been broken".
• The 1966 San Francisco memo. In October 1966 the San Francisco office sent Hoover a memo, citing Bulletins 57 and 38 (1949). It summarised a newspaper feature on the UFO controversy that mentioned Representative Gerald Ford's call for hearings and the new Condon study. It also summarised Frank Edwards's book Flying Saucers – Serious Business, with its accounts of silent, fast metallic craft reported by police officers, pilots and military personnel. The memo was a digest of published claims, not a record of reports received by the FBI.

The files also include the 1950 Guy Hottel memo, which relays a third-hand story of three "flying saucers" recovered in New Mexico. The FBI has said it is not evidence of a crash.^[4][5] A Project Blue Book file on a May 1952 sighting at Ellenton, South Carolina, near the Savannah River nuclear plant, is among the records cited for FBI involvement. The archive.org copy did not respond and could not be checked.^[12]

Where the files are

The FBI's UFO file was released under the Freedom of Information Act. It is reproduced on Project Gutenberg, transcribed by Distributed Proofreaders, and as scanned parts on archive.org.^[1][7] The FBI's online Vault hosts its UFO and "unexplained phenomenon" pages, but it refuses automated access, and an archived copy was empty.^[3][6] In May 2026 the FBI released a further set of files covering 1947–1954 in 16 parts. Coverage highlighted a July 1947 "Memorandum of Importance", obtained by "so-called supernatural means", about "etheric" visitors. That memo was not an FBI conclusion.^[4][5] A copy of a further related document, hosted on a Wix site, refuses automated access and could not be read.^[10]

Assessment

The difference is partly one of definition. After October 1947 the FBI did not investigate UFOs, but it received information and forwarded it to the Air Force, and kept files on related groups.^[2][7] The claim that UFOs had "never" been within its jurisdiction, however, is contradicted by Bulletin No. 42 and the investigations of summer 1947.^[1][7] The episode is often cited as an example of public statements that understated an agency's involvement. The files contain no proof of alien visitation.^[4][5]

People and topics

• Federal Bureau of Investigation — The U.S. federal police agency, which helped check flying disc reports from 1947 to 1950.
• Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
• Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
• U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.

On the Timeline

• House Armed Services Committee UFO hearing (1966) (5 April 1966) — The Blue Book chief tells Congress there are no unexplained radar cases, contradicted by records.
• Request for Vallée's best cases (1966) (23 July 1966) — Vallée receives a request from engineers to send their best cases to unnamed Wright Field scientists.

See every 1966 event on the UAP Timeline →

Further reading

References