Narrative Statement 3, Western United States Event, October 2023 — Department of War File
This memorandum presents the first-hand narrative from Witness 3 provided to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Witness 3 was one of several United States (U.S.) federal law enforcement special agents who reported observing unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) over a period of…
Incident Overview
October 2023, in the Western United States, the Department of War 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 memorandum presents the first-hand narrative from Witness 3 provided to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Witness 3 was one of several United States (U.S.) federal law enforcement special agents who reported observing unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) over a period of two days in October 2023 in the western United States.
Primary-source excerpt
Drawn directly from the released document: “This memorandum presents the first hand naiTative from Witness 3 provided to the All domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Witness 3 was one of several United States (U S.) federal law enforcement special agents who reported observing unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) over a period of two days in October 2023 in the western United States. ill response to AARO ‘s request to provide a free fo1m naiTative of the sequence of events exactly as they remember them, Witness 3 submitted the following text: “ill mid Oct 2023, I was with agents from our office at our work location. We were out of the office conducting work related”.
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.