FBI UFO Files
The complete FBI UFO investigation file, released in 16 parts under the Freedom of Information Act. Field office reports, inter-agency correspondence, and Bureau investigations spanning decades of UFO sighting reports.
The Bureau and the Saucers
The FBI began receiving UFO reports almost immediately after Kenneth Arnold's June 1947 sighting over Mount Rainier. Field offices across the country forwarded sighting reports to Washington, where they entered the Bureau's filing system alongside espionage cases, organised crime investigations, and domestic security matters. The Bureau's early file reflects a genuine concern that the objects might be Soviet reconnaissance devices or advanced weapons. By the time a disc was reported to have crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, the Bureau was already neck-deep in the phenomenon.
A July 1947 memo from FBI headquarters made the Bureau's position explicit: agents were to assist the Army Air Forces in investigating UFO reports, particularly those involving "weights or substances not heretofore observed." The Bureau cooperated with Project Sign and its successors, forwarding witness statements and conducting background checks on witnesses. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the Air Force's scientific consultant, was processing the same case files on the military side. Captain Edward Ruppelt, who ran Project Blue Book from 1951, coordinated with Bureau contacts. Two bureaucracies, each with its own filing system, working the same problem from different angles.
J. Edgar Hoover's own annotations appear in the early files. In one much-quoted marginal note on a 1947 memo about cooperation with the Air Force, Hoover wrote: "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." The "La. case" likely refers to a reported recovered object in Shreveport, Louisiana. Hoover believed physical material had been recovered and the Army had excluded the FBI from examining it.
Hoover wrote "discs recovered" in the margin of an official cooperation memo, weeks after Kenneth Arnold's sighting. The director of the FBI wanted to examine physical material. The Army refused. That tension between agencies fighting over access to recovered objects, each claiming jurisdiction, each shutting the other out, runs through the entire government UFO record from 1947 onward.
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.
J. Edgar Hoover, handwritten annotation on cooperation memo, July 1947
Key Documents
Hoover's "Discs Recovered" Note
Handwritten marginal note by J. Edgar Hoover on a memo proposing FBI cooperation with Air Force UFO investigations. Hoover demanded "full access to discs recovered" and referenced a Louisiana case where the Army seized material and refused Bureau access.
The Guy Hottel Memo
Special Agent Guy Hottel relayed a report from an Air Force investigator describing three recovered flying saucers in New Mexico, each approximately 50 feet in diameter, containing three small humanoid bodies. The most viewed document on the FBI Vault website. The Bureau has noted it records an unverified third-hand report, not a confirmed FBI investigation.
1947 Field Office Teletypes
Urgent teletype traffic from FBI field offices across the country reporting disc sightings in the weeks after Kenneth Arnold's Mount Rainier encounter. The messages capture real-time reactions from agents on the ground, forwarding civilian and military witness accounts to Washington headquarters.
FBI-AAF Cooperation Agreement
Headquarters memo establishing the terms of cooperation between the FBI and Army Air Forces on flying disc investigations. Agents were instructed to assist military investigators, particularly in cases involving "weights or substances not heretofore observed." The memo that prompted Hoover's famous annotation.
Contents of the File
The 16-part collection includes teletype messages between field offices, interview transcripts with civilian and military witnesses, laboratory analysis requests, and correspondence with Air Force intelligence. The early parts are the densest, covering the 1947 to 1952 period when sighting reports flooded into Bureau offices at a pace that strained existing filing procedures.
Several notable documents appear in the files beyond Hoover's annotations. A 1950 memo from Special Agent Guy Hottel describes a report from an Air Force investigator about three recovered "flying saucers" in New Mexico, each containing three small humanoid bodies. The Hottel memo became one of the most viewed documents on the FBI Vault website after its release, though the Bureau has noted that the memo represents an unverified third-hand report rather than a confirmed FBI investigation.
The file tapers off in the 1950s as the Bureau formally deferred to Project Blue Book on UFO matters. Sporadic entries continue through later decades, including references to the Condon Committee report that recommended ending official Air Force investigation. But the bulk of the collection documents the first five years of the modern UFO era, when the phenomenon was new, the Cold War was intensifying, and federal agencies were scrambling to determine whether flying saucers posed a threat to national security.
The Air Force ran the formal UFO investigation programme through Projects Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book. Browse the Blue Book Microfilm Viewer for the case files that complemented the FBI's own collection. The Roswell incident and the 1952 Washington, D.C. wave both generated FBI field office traffic preserved in these files. Dr. J. Allen Hynek and Captain Edward Ruppelt were the Air Force counterparts processing the same reports on the military side. For sighting reports from the 1947 wave onward, see the United States sightings page. The APRO Bulletin and NICAP's UFO Investigator were tracking many of the same cases the Bureau was filing.
Key Figures in the FBI UFO File
16-Part File Navigator
All 1,616 pages are available in the document viewer, where you can scroll through the complete file, click any page to enlarge it, and navigate between parts.
