65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_4
Section 4 of the FBI's 62-HQ-83894 file, October 1947 to July 1949, including a Project SIGN soil sample sent to the FBI Laboratory in 1948, a December 1948 Houston disc report, and 1949 intelligence-conference papers on protecting vital installations.
Document Highlights
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Short overview
Section 4 of FBI file 62-HQ-83894 on flying discs is a 214-page run of memoranda, teletypes, letters and clippings from October 1947 to July 1949, the period after the Bureau formally stopped its own flying disc investigations.
Why this is interesting
A March 1949 memo recalls that Bureau Bulletin No. 57 of October 1, 1947, ended FBI investigations and that reports were to go to the Air Forces, yet the section shows the Bureau still collecting them. In September and October 1948 the FBI Laboratory examined a soil sample for the Air Force’s Project “SIGN” and found no unusual elements, heat or radioactivity. In December 1948 field offices followed a Houston and Los Angeles case involving a film said to show a disc, and in February 1949 the Knoxville office forwarded a letter to the AEC in Oak Ridge that passed on an Air Force finding that a sphere on a 1947 photo was a drop on the negative. Col. C. D. Gasser of the Air Materiel Command told the Bureau that the Air Force believed the discs to be man-made missiles, possibly Russian, while San Antonio reported Army intelligence discussions of “green fireball” sightings near Los Alamos. The rest consists largely of citizens’ letters with the Bureau’s standard replies, an inquiry via Senator Kenneth S. Wherry, and newspaper clippings.
Selected passages
- “the field was advised that effective as of that date the Bureau had discontinued its investigative activities in connection with flying discs.”
- “Colonel Gasser stated that he knew nothing of an official nature concerning "Flying Discs" other than the fact that they are believed by Air Force Intelligence officials to be man-made missiles, rather than some natural phenomena.”
- “This indicates that either a drop of warm water or a drop of developer struck the film at this point”