And, indeed it does...
It's not everyday when a 63-year old interdepartmental memo from the FBI is re-released to the public, decades after its first release, and draws as much or more public attention than it did the first time. Unless that memo is from a field agent to then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and the memo is regarding UFOs... in New Mexico.
A one-page internal 63-year-old memo about a UFO report involving three alleged flying saucers and alien bodies recovered in New Mexico is making the rounds again this week. And it all started with a story that the FBI itself released.
In its own memo, titled "UFOs or No?" the FBI has informed the public that one particular memo from 1950 is the most popular file in their Vault -- an electronic reading room made available to everyone since its creation in 2011.
The memo exhibit has garnered almost a million views over the past two years.
"... an unconfirmed report that the FBI never even followed up on. The file in question is a memo dated March 22, 1950 ... authored by Guy Hottel, then head of our field office in Washington, D.C. Like all memos to FBI Headquarters at that time, it was addressed to Director J. Edgar Hoover and indexed in FBI records."
The memo told a third party story of an alleged Air Force investigator who reported that three flying saucers were recovered in New Mexico.
To be clear, the memo was issued nearly three years
after the storied
"Roswell Incident" that purportedly occurred sometime in either June and July of 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico. Any relevancy of the 1947 incident in Roswell to the FBI investigation at an undisclosed New Mexico location in 1950, at this time, is pure speculation.
It could all very well be just a very interesting vexing coincidence.
The story comes courtesy of The HuffPo:
The saucers...
"were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots."
Here's the memo:
The FBI Memo
Apparently, the web is abuzz with stories, unconfirmed, of course. Some of them claimed that the memo had already been declassified and released two years ago -- included in the block of Vault files -- at the time of the Vault's creation. Those claims are disputed in the HuffPo story.
First, the bureau explains that this document wasn't released in 2011 -- "It was first released publicly in the late 1970s and had been posted on the FBI website for several years prior to the launch of the Vault."
Second, the Hottel memo actually was obtained in 1977 by retired U.S. Navy optical physicist Bruce Maccabee, who got it as part of 1,600 documents released to him via the Freedom of Information Act.
Also, the FBI notes that when the Vault was launched in 2011, "some media outlets noticed the Hottel memo and erroneously reported that the FBI had posted proof of a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico, and the recovery of wreckage and alien corpses. The resulting stories went viral, and traffic to the new Vault soared."
The FBI stands by their claims that there's no connection between the memo and the purported crash at Roswell.
The FBI hints that some people had suggested the flying saucer-alien story was a hoax that had circulated in 1950. The bureau ends its tale saying, "Sorry, no smoking gun on UFOs. The mystery remains..."
You gotta admit the FBI left itself wide open to CTs.
• if the memo was indeed released earlier, why would they re-release it now -- especially if their goal is to dispel rumor mongers and rampant speculation?
• how in the hell does the FBI close a case file and not bother to investigate further?
• how did they know if it was a hoax or not?
"No further evaluation was attempted by redacted concerning the above."
Yeah, case closed.
WTF?
Ok, back to the real world