Record 002 · 22 March 1950
FBI Guy Hottel memo
Federal Bureau of Investigation · United States
Ledger illustration of the record — not a scan of the original paper. — Night Ledger illustration of the file
The Guy Hottel memo is among the most requested files in the FBI Vault. It is a short field-office note: an informant, already unnamed in the paper, claimed an Air Force investigator had recovered three saucers in New Mexico, each with three small bodies. The Bureau did not investigate. The memo is a record of a rumor that reached Washington, not a confirmation that anything was recovered.
The FBI later said the story tracked a known hoax of the period. The paper remains useful as a specimen of how saucer talk entered official traffic — typed, dated, filed — without becoming a finding.
Public file: FBI Vault, UFO file
