FBIUnknown

FBI policy memorandum on unidentified flying objects — October 1958

Oct 13, 1958Washington, D.C.

⟳ Deeper read pending. This record is from the FBI 62-HQ-83894 flying-disc file, whose cursive, clippings and faint scans are under-read by automated OCR. It is flagged for a vision-transcription pass and likely undercounts what the source contains — see the documents collection note.

Analysis — our summary

Section 9 contains an October 13, 1958 FBI internal memorandum summarizing Bureau policy regarding unidentified flying objects. It documents the 1947 history: FBI agreed to cooperate with Army Air Forces Intelligence per Bureau Bulletin No. 42 (July 30, 1947); a September 3, 1947 Air Defense Command letter noted the FBI was enlisted to investigate 'trash can covers, toilet seats and what not'; Bureau Bulletin No. 57 (October 1, 1947) instructed all future reports be referred to the Air Forces; and FBI advised the Air Force in a September 27, 1947 letter that FBI personnel and time could not be 'dissipated in this manner.' The memo also covers Donald Keyhoe's September 1958 inquiry to the FBI about its UFO investigation policy.

As reported — verbatim from the document

“"services of the FBI were enlisted in order to relieve the numbered Air Forces of the task of tracking down all the many instances which turned out to be 'trash can covers, toilet seats and what not'"”

Analyst notes — caveats & confidence

This is an internal FBI policy document summarizing Bureau history with UFO investigations — not a sighting report. High confidence as an administrative record. OCR quality is good. The Keyhoe reply (September 26, 1958) formally states: 'The Federal Bureau of Investigation does not investigate sightings of unidentified flying objects. When the details of such a sighting are reported to representatives of this Bureau, the information is forwarded to the Air Force.'

Provenance

Source document65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_9.pdf

Document typecorrespondence collection

Reporting agencyFBI

Source pages290

DeclassifiedFirst public at this release (2026)

Held classified~68 years (≥, to this release)

Extraction confidence HighHow cleanly this record could be parsed from the source — driven by legibility & redaction. It is not a measure of how credible or anomalous the sighting is.