FBI · FBI-UAP-D012
Newark Field Office UFO File (1952-1967)
This is the FBI Newark (New Jersey) field office's accumulated unidentified-flying-object file, a 66 page aggregation of typed intra-office memoranda, civilian telephone-complaint records, Air Force correspondence, citizen letters to Director Hoover, and clipped saucer-movement literature spanning roughly 1952 to 1967. It is not a single investigation but a running record of how a busy metropolitan field office logged and routed UFO reports it received from the public, the dominant pattern being that Newark took the report, indexed it, and referred the substance to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) rather than investigating the sighting itself.
Key excerpts
“Transmitted herewith are copies of a restricted memorandum dated 12 August 1952 ... and seven photographs allegedly of unidentified aerial objects. The Air Technical Intelligence Center has requested that the background of [the] civilian photographer, JOHN H. RILEY, 28, 571 Main Street, Paterson, N.J. and of known witness GEORGE J. STOCK, 221 Brooks Ave., Passaic, N.J., be investigated in an attempt to determine their reliability. (p. 40)”
“Between 5:40 and 6:45 PM on this date, this office was in receipt of some seven calls in regard to captioned matter. The object sighted was generally described as a very bright object with a number of twinkling lights around it ... It is to be noted that the individuals calling claimed to have numerous witnesses to this phenomena. (p. 47)”
“Mrs. [Goarcke] also stated that she believed that these unidentified flying objects could be used to obtain pictures of such installations as Boulder Dam ... [She was] during the course of [the] interview to wander in her thought process and appeared [in a] daze. (p. 40 to p. 41 area)”
Alternative hypotheses
The file is primarily a routing and indexing record, not an investigative one
most probable).
The individual sightings are mostly prosaic misidentifications
aircraft, contrails, re-entries, planets, balloons).
A residue reflects genuinely unexplained observations