FBI UFO Files: The Guy Hottel Memo and Its Limits

Quick answer

The FBI preserves UFO-related correspondence, including a 22 March 1950 memo by Guy Hottel. The bureau says this account was second- or third-hand and was never investigated. Its presence in the Vault establishes that the memo exists, not that the alleged recovery occurred.

Start with the document, then the explanation

The Vault link leads to the memorandum scan; the FBI’s 2013 article supplies its publication history and assessment. Preserve both references. A screenshot of an official letterhead removes the surrounding context, while the agency article alone does not let a reader inspect what the memo actually says.

Sources: UFOs and the Guy Hottel Memo (25 March 2013) · Guy Hottel: original memorandum scan

What Hottel recorded

Hottel, then head of the Washington Field Office, relayed an account attributed to an Air Force investigator about purported saucers in New Mexico. He was not documenting his own examination of wreckage. The memo’s closing statement says that no further evaluation was attempted. That missing investigative step matters more than sensational details repeated in headlines.

Sources: UFOs and the Guy Hottel Memo (25 March 2013)

Three dates that should not be merged

The memo is dated 1950, whereas the Roswell incident belongs to July 1947. The FBI says there is no reason to connect them. The document was publicly released in the late 1970s and was already online before the Vault’s 2011 launch. A new viral post, a redesigned archive or a later explanatory article does not make the underlying record newly declassified.

Sources: UFOs and the Guy Hottel Memo (25 March 2013)

A reproducible reading note

For another FBI UFO file, record its Vault title, page number, writer, recipient, date and source of each claim. Ask whether it contains a direct observation, an enclosed clipping or an investigative conclusion. If an enclosure is absent, leave that gap explicit. NASA’s broader UAP guidance helps explain why an unexplained or incomplete account is not an identification of extraterrestrial technology; it does not authenticate this memo’s story.

Sources: UAP FAQs