FBI: Roswell UFO Telegram (July 8, 1947)

RoswellProof.com

The telegram below from the FBI Dallas office was sent to the Washington headquarters on July 8, 1947 at 6:17 pm Central Time (probably Standard Time). It is the only known government document directly relating to Roswell that has ever been found. (A higher-resolution PDF version of this telegram can be downloaded from the FBI Freedom of Information Web site here).

Although blacked out in this copy, the 8th AAF contact person with the FBI is known to have been Major Edwin Kirton (misspelled as "Curtan" in the telegram), one of Gen. Ramey's intelligence officers. Kirton seems to have been one of Ramey's key media spokespersons, because he was also contacted and quoted by the press on at least two occasions. This in itself is somewhat odd, because normally such a task would be handled by a public information officer, not an intelligence officer.

Reuters news agency may have been the first to contact Kirton, since his statements to Reuters are the least definitive compared to those made elsewhere. Reuters identified Kirton as a nondescript "duty officer," not an intelligence officer, and said that his statements represented quotes from Ramey. In the Reuters article, Kirton did not specifically identify the recovered object.

Instead he gave a physical description very similar to that given the FBI but said nothing about it being or resembling a radar target. He did say it might be a weather balloon, but one not allegedly recognizable by anybody at the base as "an army type balloon," However, not only did Ramey early on sometimes identify the debris as resembling a radar target (e.g., San Francisco Examiner and early UP story in the San Francisco News), when Ramey announced the official identification, he was quoted as saying that it "definitely was a United States Army device." (See AP main story) As was often the case, the story being given the press was inconsistent. More