CASE 17708 (CLOSED) and DR. Leon Davidson, 1958 — CIA File

Incident Overview

In 1958, in an undisclosed location, CIA 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 1958 CIA memorandum discussing a phone conversation with Dr. Leon Davidson regarding concerns about a destroyed “space message and its transmitter.” A redacted version of this memorandum has been available on CIA’s public website.

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.

Sources

• Original release on war.gov
• Department of War UFO Disclosure Portal
• AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office)