PURSUE Release 03

On the morning of 15 February 2022, five US Army soldiers walked out of a building at Fort Carson into a clear blue sky. One of them noticed an object hanging in the saddle of Cheyenne Mountain, the low point between the peaks, approximately three hundred to five hundred feet above the ridgeline and six miles to the west. Beneath it, inside the mountain, sat the operations centre of the North American Aerospace Defence Command. The object was matte white, non-metallic, oval and horizontal, with a curved indentation on the bottom and intersecting lines or ridges across its surface forming what one witness described as "an abstract polygon pattern."

None of the soldiers had a phone. Fort Carson's security protocols do not permit personal devices in many operational areas. They watched the object, tried to decide who should go back to the vehicle to get a camera, and in the moment they looked away, the object was gone. They searched the western skyline but could not find it again.

Two and a half years later, in July 2024, the witness, identified in the FBI's forensic sketch document as a former US Army intelligence officer, sat with an FBI Operational Projects Unit forensic artist at 26 Federal Plaza in New York. The OPU is the FBI division that produces forensic portraits of criminal suspects. The same methodology was applied here. In the session, the witness refined his description: the object was "potato shaped" with distinct edges, "creamy, whitish opalescent," "somewhat translucent with a slight shimmer." Its surface was "made up of what can best be described as articulating fish scales or panels that were non-symmetrical, non-overlapping, and irregular shaped. The object itself was perfectly still but each panel on the object shifted in slow waves starting at different points of origin but at the same time."

When it disappeared, the witness used a specific word. He said it "cloaked." The Intelligence Community Agency analysis, included in this release, proposes that the object was "possible backscattering of sunlight" off snow-illuminated low-level clouds. The analyst rated this assessment low confidence. The witnesses reported clear blue skies. The analysis depends on clouds the witnesses say were not there. The documentary record, as released through PURSUE, preserves both the testimony and the attempt to explain it.

Read the full reconstruction in The Cheyenne Mountain Object.

The first sighting was at five in the morning in November 2021. The witness, a self-described sceptic who had lived at the Northeastern US property since the same year, was exercising in his house when he noticed lights outside the back window. He thought someone was in the yard with a flashlight. When he went outside, a singular light split into two or three, formed a triangular pattern, and remained for approximately ten minutes. While filming on his smartphone, he accidentally triggered the flash. The lights immediately disappeared.

In the years that followed, he saw hundreds of these lights. He set up trail cameras. He deployed sensors. He measured gamma radiation on his property and found that spikes in the readings correlated with times he observed the objects. His electronics and GPS devices showed unusual effects during the observations. He used ADS-B flight data to cross-reference his sightings against aircraft flight paths, systematically ruling out conventional traffic.

He was referred to the FBI in August 2024. The case was filed under the Bureau's Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon Division. In November 2024, two special agents visited the property to confirm the reports. The weather was forty-eight degrees, overcast, no precipitation. Twenty minutes after they walked out to the patio, one of the agents observed a white pulsation of light at the northern edge of a nearby body of water. It moved horizontally with erratic movements. It did not reflect off the water surface. It did not illuminate the ground below it. At approximately 5:30, both agents observed what they assessed to be a UAP at the far end of a pond: a bright white light above a bright red light, hovering at treetop height.

One agent attempted to photograph what they were seeing. Five photos were taken, but the long exposure without a tripod produced blurry images. The agents noted that a stable platform would be required for future attempts. In December 2024, the agents returned in daylight to survey the areas where they had observed the phenomena. Walking a two-mile perimeter, they descended to the water's edge and confirmed full line of sight to the witness's property. Their assessment of the physical environment was direct: drone operation at night under the moderate tree cover was "unrealistic."

Read the full reconstruction in FBI Agents See It for Themselves.

On the afternoon of 2 July 2008, an unidentified object was observed hovering at high altitude directly over Harare International Airport. The observation was made, according to the CIA cable that followed, "possibly by both radar and optical means." At one point during the observation, "beams" were observed emanating from the object. The object was disc-like in shape with a hollow centre, a series of rotating lights on the underside, and the rotating lights shifted colours before the object ascended out of visual range. The sighting resulted in a decision to place Zimbabwe's military forces on high alert.

The cable went to the White House Situation Room, the Director of National Intelligence, the Joint Chiefs, the Secretary of State, all service chiefs, the FBI, the NSA, the DIA, the Secret Service, Homeland Security, US European Command, US Africa Command, US Strategic Command, and NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe. Cables of this breadth go to the entire national security apparatus because they describe events assessed as potentially affecting US strategic interests across multiple domains.

The cable's analytical framework is notable. The text does not dismiss the extraterrestrial hypothesis. It records it alongside the foreign reconnaissance hypothesis as one of two possibilities the observers considered. Both are presented as live options. This is the language of the reporting cable itself, written within twenty-four hours of the event, classified SECRET/NOFORN, and held in classification for eighteen years before its release on 12 June 2026.

Read the full reconstruction in A Disc Over Harare.

Three historical documents complete the release. On 24 February 1949, the US Army's Plans and Operations Division noted that it had not received any evaluation of the flying saucer phenomenon. Eleven days later, on 7 March 1949, the Intelligence Division delivered its completed evaluation. Three radio messages from Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, sent in January and February 1949, had triggered the request. Kirtland was the installation at the centre of the Green Fireballs phenomenon that was then alarming military and scientific personnel across New Mexico. The Army's evaluation concluded that "of all cases investigated there was no foreign nation implication in these flying saucers." The Intelligence Division would keep Plans and Operations informed if future developments were "at variance with the evaluation placed on this study."

The 1949 FBI correspondence referral preserves a citizen's letter to J. Edgar Hoover reporting four converging beams with atmospheric effects over the Cascade Mountains. Alongside the Army evaluation sit a 1948 US Navy report on flying discs and the two-part US Air Force analysis of flying objects, the institutional response of all three services in the phenomenon's earliest years.

Read the full reconstruction in The First Alert.