Washington UFO Sighting (June 25, 1950) — FBI Files
An FBI-documented sighting from June 1950 describes a silver, cigar-shaped object observed over Washington, D.C.
Background
On June 25, 1950, in Washington, District of Columbia, U.S. government investigators recorded an unidentified-object incident later released to the public on May 8, 2026, as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). This event occurred during a period of heightened national anxiety regarding aerial incursions into American airspace. The incident belongs to the first wave of “flying saucer” reports that swept the United States following the Kenneth Arnold sighting of June 1947 and the Roswell incident of July 1947. During this era, the Cold War was intensifying, and the presence of unidentified aerial phenomena was often viewed through the lens of national security and the potential for Soviet technological advancement.
The case was filed with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, whose Knoxville, Albuquerque, Los Angeles, and other field offices routed UFO reports to headquarters under the Bureau’s standing protocols for the protection of vital installations. At the time, the FBI maintained a systematic approach to monitoring unusual aerial activity that might threaten sensitive government infrastructure or communication networks. The administrative handling of such reports reflected a broader bureaucratic effort to categorize and track anomalies that fell outside the scope of standard meteorological or aeronautical monitoring.
What the document records
On June 25, 1950, Douglas Harrison reported observing a cigar-shaped object while looking out of his window. He estimated the object’s altitude to be between 20,000 and 25,000 feet and its size to be approximately four inches at that distance. Harrison stated the object was silver in color and moved in an easterly direction. While the specific movement patterns of the object were noted, the number of witnesses is not specified in the released document.
The documentation provides a specific visual description of the craft’s morphology. The file contains a verbatim excerpt describing the visual characteristics of the sighting: “He described this object as resembling a cigar, the end of which was tilted down toward the earth and presenting a silver appearance.” The witnesses described the object as airship-like or cigar-shaped, a common descriptor in mid-century sightings involving elongated or cylindrical aerial phenomena.
Analysis and Classification
The status of this case remains officially unverified. All records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) by default. The federal government has not concluded that the events were anomalous, has not concluded that they were conventional, and has not ruled out either possibility. Such a designation is standard for historical declassifications where the original investigative data lacks sufficient sensor-based evidence to confirm or deny the nature of the object.
When evaluating sightings from the early 1950s, researchers often consider several conventional candidates. These include experimental aircraft developed during the rapid post-war expansion of aviation technology, or weather balloons, particularly those associated with the Project Mogul series in the late 1940s, which were designed to detect Soviet nuclear tests. Other possibilities include atmospheric optical phenomena such as sundogs or lenticular clouds, which can create the illusion of solid, structured objects. Additionally, astronomical objects including Venus, the Moon, or meteors near the horizon are frequently cited as potential sources for reports of bright, moving lights. The cigar-shaped description of the June 1950 incident aligns with a specific subset of mid-century reports that deviated from the more common disc-shaped or saucer-shaped descriptions prevalent in the immediate aftermath of 1947.