Documents / FOIA release
This FBI file section, from 1947, gathers Army Air Forces counterintelligence reports and FBI memoranda about the summer's flying disc reports. It includes a Boise newspaper pilot's sworn statement describing a black object he filmed on 9 July 1947, interviews with a United Air Lines captain and a Hamilton Field soldier, and a Pan American crew's orange object near Boston. Other items cover the Tacoma disk fragment story, which was admitted to be false, the fatal B-25 crash at Kelso, a coded "Radio Ham" message dismissed as a hoax, and an Air Defense Command assessment that "something is really flying around."
“FBI”20 pages
MEMORANDUM FOR THE OFFICER IN CHANGE: 1. On 12 July 1947, a call was made at the newspaper office of the "Idaho Daily Statesman", Poise, Idaho. The newspaper of the paper, was interviewed in regard to how well he knew the location of Poise, Idaho, and as to the credibility of any statement made by the newspaper. The purpose of this interview was an attempt to verify statements made by the newspaper on 26 June 1947, to various national news services to the effect that he had seen 9 objects flying in the air above the Cascade Mountain Range of Washington. These objects were subsequently referred to as flying saucers or flying disks and will here-in-after be referred to as such in this report. The newspaper stated that he had known for quite a period of time, having had relations with the newspaper on various occasions, due to the fact that both he, the newspaper and the private fliers and frequently got together to talk shop. The newspaper stated that as far as he was concerned anything said could be taken very seriously and that he, the newspaper actually believed that Mr. Arnold had seen the aforementioned flying disks. The newspaper stated that after the newspaper reported having seen the flying disks, that the editor of the paper had assigned him, the assignment of taking the airplane belonging to the newspaper and exhausting all efforts to prove or disprove the probability of flying disks having been seen in the northwest area. The results of this assignment to the newspaper and what he subsequently saw is put forth in a sworn statement signed by the newspaper attached to this report as exhibit. AGENT'S NOTES: is a man of approximately 33 to 35 years of age. Then all appearances he is a very reserved type of person. He has logged 2300 hours of flying time in various types of airplanes up to and including multirope aircraft. During part of the war years, he was the agent being assigned to the Twentieth USAAF and stationed oninian Island, in the Pacific. It is the personal opinion of the interviewer that actually saw what he states that he saw in the attached report. It is also the opinion of the interviewer that would have much more to lose than gain and would have to be very strongly convinced that he actually saw something before he would report such an incident and open himself for the ridicule that would accompany such a report. 1 Incl: Exhibit "B" S/ A, CIC with AF
FOIA release, from the fbi-vault collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 111 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.