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Federal Bureau of Investigation

The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) is the federal investigative agency of the United States and falls under the Department of Justice. In UFO research it comes up mainly because of early Cold War cases and files that were later made public.

The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) is the federal investigative agency of the United States and falls under the Department of Justice. Its responsibilities are investigating federal crimes, counterintelligence and counterterrorism. It is often mentioned in connection with the UFO/UAP topic because in the late 1940s and in the 1950s it also received such reports, and later made its related records public.

Role in UFO cases

During the first post-World War II "flying saucer" wave, in Summer 1947, the FBI agreed with the Army Air Forces to help investigate sightings. The cooperation was short-lived. In a well-known handwritten note, Director J. Edgar Hoover demanded full access to recovered discs. The reason was a Louisiana case in which the military did not allow the object, which later proved to be a hoax, to be examined. The FBI pulled out of the cooperation in the fall of 1947 because it felt the military was mainly using it to check prank and hoax cases. After that, the agency generally forwarded such reports to military bodies and dealt with them only if a security or fraud aspect arose.

Public records

The FBI's UFO-related records were made public following requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The first such request was filed by Bruce Maccabee in the 1970s. Since 2011, the records have also been available in the FBI's online reading room called "The Vault." The best-known item in the collection is the so-called Hottel memo: on March 22, 1950, Guy Hottel, head of the Washington office, forwarded to Hoover an intermediary's account according to which three "flying saucers" with small-statured bodies inside them had been found in New Mexico. According to the FBI, the memo is merely the forwarding of an unverified claim, and several researchers link it to the "Aztec" hoax of the time. It is often mistakenly cited as evidence for the Roswell incident.

Differing assessments

According to the official finding, the records do not prove extraterrestrial origin, and the FBI did not conduct independent UFO research. According to some researchers, the files show serious interest on the part of the authorities at the time, while according to skeptics they rather document the routine handling of reports.

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