FBI Releases Document Confirming Roswell UFO Incident? | Hacker News Reader

FBI Releases Document Confirming Roswell UFO Incident?

vault.fbi.gov

33 pointsrosser20 comments

The headline of the submission here might as well read, "Document in trove of released FBI files records interview of person claiming to have seen flying saucer." There isn't an official action of the FBI here "confirming" any of the wilder stories about Roswell.

Nevertheless, it is an FBI agent reporting to the director of the bureau that an air force official told him they recovered Alien bodies. It's not a primary source but it's the closest I've ever seen.

It's a known historical fact that the United States sent a chimpanzee into outer space before sending a human being.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/31/...

Thus it wouldn't be too surprising if Air Force flight experiments also used chimpanzees as test flight subjects.

Even if the FBI memo fully accurately recounts the conversation the special agent had, and even if the person interviewed was not mistaken about what he described, "bodies of human shape but only three feet tall" doesn't exclude chimpanzees. ("Three feet tall" is a round figure, unless the person asserts he made an exact measurement, and female chimpanzees are about that tall at full growth.)

Do you really think that little people wearing shiny pants came here in saucers? Because that's what the paper says.

I tried a lot of different phrasings to include that the release may have been inadvertent, or that there's nothing first-hand, &c. None of them would fit, or fit without linguistic gymnastics, so I went with simple. I probably could've kept the question mark.

As for "confirming", as I said in an earlier comment, this isn't official confirmation. It's just the release of documentation of a conversation where the phrase "flying saucers" was used in apparent seriousness by someone who claimed to know.

This is actually absurdly hilarious.

I've always wondered that if there were "flying saucers" or some other form of UFO that had visited Earth in the past, and continued to do so in modern days, wouldn't we expect to see more footage rather than less? It seems like most of the incidences of UFO sightings happened in the past. Yet today virtually everybody carries a camera or a phone capable of photography or video, and there are fewer sightings.

I have no doubt that there's life beyond Earth. I'm just not sure there's anything we'd consider a UFO that's been zooming around our airspace.

fwiw, http://weeklyworldnews.com/headlines/23926/ufo-over-richmond... http://www.ghosttheory.com/2010/10/17/texas-ufo-sighting-sim...

Is there any information as to where this came from? Yes, the FBI vault, but why did they choose to release this now?

Did somebody request it? If so, how did they know to request this specific piece of information? (Is this how FOIA requests work?)

There was something just like this on reddit a few days ago, but it was dated April 1.

Seems a bit odd that somebody would go out of their way to release something like this unless it was either asked for, or it was a joke.

If it's a joke/urban legend, then Snopes has been caught with their pants down.

Well, not confirming confirming, but when an agent reports talking to an Air Force investigator about "flying saucers" and little humanoids dressed in "metallic cloth of a very fine texture", you're probably in the neighborhood.

Oops?

The title of this story is over the top. The document confirms nothing. It says "someone claimed some flying saucers have been recovered. We decided it's a matter not worth pursuing."

That "someone" was an investigator for the Air Force (or at least passed as one to the FBI). The document doesn't say the FBI decided it was a matter not worth pursuing, only that the one agent didn't "attempt further evaluation".

It's a curious document for sure.

The American Southwest is the most heavily atomic-bombed place in the world. There was a lot of radiation in the air back then.

Marsh, do you believe that little people in shiny pants came here in saucers?

I find myself enjoying the ambiguity more than either of the alternatives. :-)

Ok, but to what extent do you have to entertain little saucer pilots in shiny pants in order to take this particular document seriously? :)

Oh probably not at all. That's just one of a hundred explanations of wildly varying degrees of plausibility and they're all interesting.

I can just imagine the FBI field agent wiping away the tears of laughter as he types up this memo back to headquarters after chatting with the USAF guys using spatulas to scrape the fried chimpanzees in silver lame' flightsuits off the wreckage of some top secret atomic-powered X-plane.

Why didn't Mulder just check his bureau's record room?

"No further evaluation was attempted by SA ... concerning the above."

Really nothing unusual here. I can see why they would not be interested in learning more.

Those were not the droids they were looking for.

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