Phoenix, Arizona UFO Sighting (December 30, 1958) — FBI Files
A cold war / blue book era case from Phoenix, Arizona. A request was made to recontact Claude Marck, Jr.
Background
On December 30, 1958, in Phoenix, Arizona, 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). The incident is a Cold War-era case investigated under the Air Force’s Project Blue Book or its predecessors. 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.
What the document records
A request was made to recontact Claude Marck, Jr. to obtain the correct address of the publisher of a book titled “They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers.” The Bureau was interested in obtaining a copy of the book, as it might contain information related to the “Bender Affair” and other unidentified flying objects. Marck had inquired about data concerning the “Bender Affair” and claimed Albert Bender, founder of the International Flying Saucer Bureau, was silenced by “three men in black suits” after claiming to know the nature of flying saucers.
The number of witnesses is not specified in the released document.
Verbatim from the file
“Three men in black suits silenced Bender to the extent that even today Bender will not discuss the matter of his “hush-up” with anyone”. “He explained that Bender formed the International Flying Saucer Bureau in Connecticut in 1952 to look into the flying saucer mystery”. “In 1953 Bender allegedly stated he knew what the saucers are”
Type of case
The witnesses described the object as disc- or saucer-shaped.
Status
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. Conventional candidates for sightings of this period include experimental aircraft, weather balloons (especially the Project Mogul series in the late 1940s), atmospheric optical phenomena such as sundogs and lenticular clouds, and astronomical objects including Venus, the Moon, and meteors near the horizon.