A newly declassified letter from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, dated September 6, 1967, offers a glimpse into the Bureau’s institutional approach to UFO-related correspondence during the Cold War era.
The document, addressed to Mrs. Levi Cnow of Goffstown, New Hampshire, was released as part of the PURSUE archive under the Trump administration and made public by the Department of War on May 8, 2026. The letter is brief and formal. Hoover informs Mrs. Cnow that the FBI does not evaluate organizations or individuals and describes the Bureau as “strictly an investigative agency.” He explains that her communication, which included enclosures about a “Flying Saucer Club,” “will be made a matter of record.” The response neither dismisses nor encourages her inquiry, taking a neutral bureaucratic stance.
This document is part of Section 10 of case file 62-HQ-83894, which runs 55.4 MB. The file was previously available on the FBI’s Vault website but with more redactions and missing pages.
The current release is complete. The official description states the file covers “investigative records, eyewitness testimonies, and public reports concerning Unidentified Flying Objects and flying discs documented between June 1947 and July 1968.” The full file includes high-profile incidents, photographs from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and technical proposals on propulsion systems. Hoover’s letter represents a small but revealing piece of this larger collection.
It demonstrates that the Bureau was tracking the subject of UFOs, though not necessarily investigating the phenomena themselves. Instead, the FBI appeared to be monitoring public interest and the individuals who reported sightings or organized around the topic.
The release is part of the PURSUE archive, a transparency initiative ordered by the Trump administration and executed by the Department of War. The archive aims to make previously classified or redacted records available to the public. The description notes that the file was previously redacted but is now unredacted, suggesting a pattern of further releases may follow. Other sections of case 62-HQ-83894 are likely forthcoming, along with additional case files.
The Hoover letter itself is signed by the director, indicating he personally acknowledged the public’s UFO interest rather than delegating the response. For historians, this confirms that the Bureau maintained an institutional posture of neither confirming nor denying the reality of UFOs.
They collected reports, wrote polite letters, and preserved everything. The PURSUE archive makes the PDF available for download on its official website. The release allows the public to see what the Bureau saw: letters from citizens, photographs from Oak Ridge, and technical proposals that likely went nowhere.
The record itself serves as an evaluation, showing that the FBI watched, filed, and kept the information secret until now.
