65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_7

Short overview

Section 7 of the FBI headquarters file 62-HQ-83894 covers August 1952 to June 1954 and consists largely of letters from the public, press clippings and internal memos, together with the Air Force’s 1952 public statement on its flying saucer investigations.

Why this is interesting

The core is a Defense Department information sheet passed to the FBI in October 1952 by Albert Chop of the Office of Public Information: of about 1,500 reports the Air Force had analyzed, roughly 20 percent could not be explained, no pattern of a menace had emerged, and new tools such as diffraction-grating cameras and a wide-field Schmidt telescope were planned. Related memos show the FBI checking with the Air Technical Intelligence Center and Chop after a New Yorker article suggested the Bureau investigated saucers; both denied ever saying so. The rest documents the public mood: a translated German claim of a Soviet-held disc “V-weapon,” the International Flying Saucer Bureau’s newsletter Space Review, a Chilean letter, the 1953 Atlanta “little man” that an anatomy professor said appeared to be a monkey without hair, letters from an Austrian who claimed the flying saucer as his own invention, and questions about contactee books. In June 1954 the Seattle office, which each season receives many reports of submarines, flashing lights, parachute landings and flying saucers, passes on that OSI gives no credence whatsoever to the reports forwarded for evaluation at Wright-Patterson.

Selected passages

• “The unexplained reports, however, which are in the order of 20 percent of the total, cannot be definitely associated with these familiar things.”
• “Nonetheless, since these unexplained sightings persist, the Air Force will continue its investigations, giving the problem adequate but not frantic attention.”
• “he at no time has indicated to any writer or newspaper representative that the FBI conducts investigations pertaining to flying saucers.”