A telegram sent from Brazil in 1963 describing a dead crewman inside a crashed metal balloon is among 41 new documents the Pentagon released on Friday, though a follow-up cable just six days later called the entire report fabricated.
The release is the fifth batch of declassified UFO material published this year.
Inside new UFO Files
Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell announced the files on Friday as part of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE).
The collection draws from the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, State Department and Executive Office of the President, with records spanning 1950 through 2026. Parnell said further releases are already in preparation.
These documents, however, predate the current UFO disclosure movement by many years. The first document was created in January 1947, when an intelligence review referred to “ghost rockets” seen in Finland and Denmark the previous year, which were thought to have been Soviet rocket testing.
This 1948 memo to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base said that “some kind of flying object” had really been seen, without an explanation.
In more recent documents, a 2021 description was made by members of the military in the Gulf of Oman regarding 25 objects that were moving at up to 1,300mph in a live-fire operation.
Another report is based on an account from a former service member regarding a silent, triangular-shaped object around 500 feet long passing over Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan in June 2002, blocking out the stars while it passed overhead.
Two more triangle sightings were digitally rendered by the FBI in 2023 and 2011, respectively; both occurred in Colorado Springs, based on testimony rather than photographs.
