Case File · AARO · Modern Wave (1970-1989) Declassified May 8, 2026 · PURSUE Release 01

1970 UAP Sighting — AARO Records

UFO Visual Sighting

An interviewee claimed, through a thirdhand account, that an organization possessed 12 spacecraft recovered from various crash events. Some of these craft were allegedly intact, and the CIA reportedly sought the return of all material in 1989.

prior to 1970
Unknown location
Source document: PURSUE doc 196
Source document: PURSUE doc 196 · Source: declassified document

Background

A UFO/UAP incident extracted from page 28 of AARO Historical Record Report Vol 1 2024, an All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) document published in 2024-2025. The incident is dated prior to 1970 and located in Unknown location.

What the document records

An interviewee claimed, through a thirdhand account, that an organization possessed 12 spacecraft recovered from various crash events. Some of these craft were allegedly intact, and the CIA reportedly sought the return of all material in 1989.

Witnesses on file: AARO interviewee (thirdhand account).

Verbatim from the file

“claimed in a thirdhand account that an organization85 was in possession of 12 spacecraft recovered from different crash events prior to 1970.”. “Some of the craft allegedly were “intact.””. “The interviewee also stated that the CIA had a partnership with the company that ended in 1989 and wanted all material returned to the CIA.”

Status of the case

The page-level assessment recorded in the document is: no empirical evidence supporting these claims. AARO designates unresolved cases as those for which the agency 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 recent periods include drones, classified test platforms, satellite re-entry, balloon traffic, atmospheric optical phenomena, and astronomical objects.

Sources