Rolling Meadows, Illinois: The FBI Checks O'Hare's Drone Sensors

What this record is

Three items in the FBI’s UAP series at the National Archives cover one tip from a Chicago suburb. The first is the Guardian electronic communication of 22 December 2024, titled “NTOC2024 Possible UAPs Hovering Near Rolling Meadows, IL,” which passed a call to the FBI’s National Threat Operations Center (NTOC) to the Chicago field office. The second is an FD-302 interview report entered on 7 January 2025, with the witness’s screenshots and a video attached. The third, dated 8 January 2025, is the complete 16-page Guardian file: the tip as it arrived from eGuardian, the agent’s emails with Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) and the Chicago Department of Aviation, the case notes and the closing summary. The video (an MP4 attached to the FD-302 item) has not been viewed for this page and is described only from the documents, which reproduce several of the phone screenshots as largely featureless frames.

Personal details are redacted under section 1843 of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act. The files were listed in the National Archives catalog in late May 2026.

What it says

At 8:37 p.m. Eastern time on 20 December 2024, a Rolling Meadows resident called NTOC to report three or four glowing orbs hovering in the sky since about 5:05 p.m. local time. From a distance they looked like stars, he said, but up close they looked like round circles “with stuff moving around them.” He had taken photos and video and looked at them through a telescope, and he was specific that they were not drones, though he did not know what they were. NTOC forwarded it “out of an abundance of caution” because Rolling Meadows is about five miles from Chicago O’Hare International Airport. Searches of the FBI’s Guardian and Sentinel systems for the caller found nothing.

A Chicago agent and a task force officer interviewed him at home on 2 January 2025. He liked to take night walks around the neighbourhood. On 20 December, walking home, he looked south and saw a bright glowing light. He filmed it and took photographs, trying to zoom in with his Samsung phone, and said the light began to shake or streak before becoming still again. Further on he saw a similar light. It was cold, so he went indoors to try his telescope but still could not make out what it was. He heard nothing unusual. On 31 December he saw “the same bright light again around sunset” while facing south, but did not film it. He texted the files to the agent.

On 23 December the agent emailed contacts at OEMC and O’Hare. The message is candid about the moment: since the FBI had been made lead agency “for all things related to” UAP, the office was “receiving an influx of sightings with all the coverage NJ is getting.” OEMC replied that its drone-detection system logged 36 hits that day, none near 5 p.m. and none that far west; its sensors did not reach Rolling Meadows. One drone detected at 4:52 p.m. did not appear to take off, and the next was at 5:36 p.m., both on downtown sensors. O’Hare’s system had three hits on 20 December, all in the morning, and nothing towards Rolling Meadows.

The closing note, approved on 8 January 2025, says the video and screenshots showed a bright yellow-white light that at times appeared diamond-shaped. The witness said it streaked from side to side, but on review “it appeared to only streak as the witness attempted to zoom out on his phone,” and the streaking was caused by the phone moving while recording. With no detection equipment covering the area and no other identifying features, there were no further leads. The case was closed.

Context

This file is a snapshot of December 2024, when reports of mysterious drones over New Jersey spread nationwide and ordinary sightings poured into federal tip lines. It also shows what an FBI office could check at the time: two city and airport drone-detection networks, neither of which covered the suburb in question. Similar FBI UAP interviews from late 2024 were released in the PURSUE programme, including the orbs-over-the-pond video.

The most likely explanation is one the FBI did not spell out. In December 2024 Venus was a brilliant evening star in the southwest after sunset, with Saturn, bright as a first-magnitude star, higher up in the south. Sunset in the Chicago area that day was about 4:20 p.m., so a light that “looked like a star” in the southern sky at 5:05 p.m., and was there again “around sunset” on 31 December, fits Venus and Saturn closely. A bright point of light filmed through a phone’s digital zoom often shows as a diamond or polygon, the shape of the camera’s out-of-focus blur, and hand shake at high zoom makes it appear to dart about. The FBI’s own reading of the video, that the streaking was camera movement, is consistent with this.

Status

The FBI closed the matter in January 2025 without an identification and found no drone activity to support the report. The record contains nothing that points to an unusual object, and the time, direction, repetition on another evening and the appearance on video all fit bright planets in the early evening sky. The case is probably explained, though the file itself stops short of saying so.

Sources

• National Archives catalog, Guardian case file, 8 January 2025: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/653628634
• File: https://catalog.archives.gov/medialz/electronic-records/rg-615/580705010/065UAP00006_redacted.pdf
• National Archives catalog, Guardian electronic communication, 22 December 2024: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/653628628
• File: https://catalog.archives.gov/medialz/electronic-records/rg-615/580705010/065UAP00004_redacted.pdf
• National Archives catalog, Form FD-302, 7 January 2025 (includes video): https://catalog.archives.gov/id/653628630
• Files: https://catalog.archives.gov/medialz/electronic-records/rg-615/580705010/065UAP00005_redacted.pdf and https://catalog.archives.gov/medialz/electronic-records/rg-615/580705010/065UAP00005a_released.mp4
• Series: Records from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Relating to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: https://catalog.archives.gov/id/580705010
• NASA JPL, “What’s Up: December 2024” (Venus and Saturn in the evening sky): https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/whats-up-december-2024/
• Astronomy, “December 2024: What’s in the sky this month?”: https://www.astronomy.com/observing/sky-this-month-december-2024/