D/FBI Correspondence Referral, 1949 — FBI File
This collection of documents contains correspondence between the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J. Edgar Hoover, and Rev.
Incident Overview
In 1949, in an undisclosed location, FBI preserved a documentary record that was declassified and published on June 12, 2026 as part of the third tranche of the Department of War’s Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).
What the government released
This collection of documents contains correspondence between the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), J. Edgar Hoover, and Rev. Charles Barnes concerning Barnes’ account of an incident potentially involving unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). Rev. Barnes described observing four beams of light “converging in the Cascade Mountains,” at an altitude of approximately 10,000 feet, with a “great explosion” visible at the convergence point of those beams for at least ten minutes. Director Hoover replied to Rev. Barnes thanking him for his letter and informing him that he had forwarded it to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Director Hoover conveyed to the AEC that Rev. Barnes believed that the event may relate to a military or scientific experiment within the commission’s purview.
Status of the case
Records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which means the federal government has not concluded the events were anomalous, has not concluded they were conventional, and has not ruled out either possibility. Where AARO has offered a likely source for an item — an infrared sensor aboard a military aircraft, a commercial camera, or a known optical effect — that attribution is the agency’s working assessment rather than a final determination. Conventional candidates such as drones, balloons, flares, satellites, parallax and forced-perspective artifacts, and ordinary aircraft remain on the table for any unresolved case absent better data than a single sensor pass or a witness recollection.