1961 UAP Sighting — FBI Files
A memorandum reiterated the FBI's policy of referring all unidentified flying object reports to the Air Force, as established in 1947. The memorandum also referenced previous SAC letters reinforcing this policy.
Background
A UFO/UAP incident extracted from page 194 of 65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_9, a declassified FBI vault file released by the Department of War on May 8, 2026 as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). The incident is dated October 2, 1961 and located in Unknown location.
What the file records
A memorandum reiterated the FBI’s policy of referring all unidentified flying object reports to the Air Force, as established in 1947. The memorandum also referenced previous SAC letters reinforcing this policy.
Witnesses on file: FBI.
Status of the case
The page-level assessment recorded in the file is: no agency assessment. All records released under the PURSUE program are designated unresolved by the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office unless otherwise stated, meaning the federal government has not concluded the events were anomalous, has not concluded 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), atmospheric optical phenomena, and astronomical objects.