Whether or not you believe in Earthly visitation by alien beings, it's undeniable that UFOs have, at the least, become an essential part of modern day folklore. And in a bevy of stories that have added on to that treasure trove of fantastic tales, there's one document that, according to Atlas Obscura, has become the most popular FBI file among UFO truthers.

The document is just called "Guy Hottel," named after an agent in an FBI field office. It's publicly available on the FBI Vault website, among a handful of other UFO and related cases. In one page, it describes an incident relayed second or third hand of a three separate but related UFO crashes around 1950 in New Mexico, with three alien bodies described as having a "human shape" but only being three feet tall, clothed in a metallic fabric. "Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots," Hottel said. The craft itself was described as being 50 feet in diameter.

The agency denies that it's related to Roswell, or that they even seriously investigated it. "Finally, the Hottel memo does not prove the existence of UFOs; it is simply a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated," it says. "Some people believe the memo repeats a hoax that was circulating at that time, but the Bureau's files have no information to verify that theory."

FBI

As Atlas Obscura points out, it's likely connected to a sort of space age snakeoil peddler named Silas Newton, whose claims were usually to spurious mining operations along with a series of UFO crash claims. According to TopSecretWriters, Newton finally got caught in 1970 after just under 20 years of FBI investigations for selling land to out-of-state speculators, claiming it had precious ore. Of course, that land just happened to be some of the land he claimed UFOs crashed on. The memo could be related to Newton's Aztec UFO hoax, one that Newton and an accomplice duped journalist Frank Scully into believing.

Though Newton wasn't tied to the Roswell incident, it's interesting to note that Roswell itself had fallen into obscurity from 1947 until 1978 when Stanton Friedman resurrected it. Most investigations into the matter, after the initial crash of the terrestrial experimental aircraft, took place at that time from second and third hand accounts. In fact, the reason for the crash at Roswell was declassified in the early 1970s, before Friedman's investigations into the matter.

The FBI rarely touched UFO cases at the time, with the Air Force handling most investigations under Project Bluebook. Bluebook dug up no conclusive proof of UFOs, though a few investigations proved vexxing.

It's also interesting to note that from the 1920s to the 1950s, New Mexico was ground zero for rocketry research. Robert Goddard carried out much of his early research there, with Nazi rocket engineer turned NASA pioneer Wehrner Von Braun further developing rocketry technology for the nascent American space program at the White Sands Missile Range. In other words, there was a lot going on in the skies of New Mexico for quite some time, and some of it was definitely coming back down from high in the skies.

So there you have it. The Hottel memo was either something so spurious that the FBI passed on investigating it (only relaying it to J. Edgar Hoover because of the director's paranoia on all things) or obvious evidence of a massive cover-up. But given the actors involved, it's safe to say it's the latter. That won't kill it off for sure, of course. Hillary Clinton allegedly wants to "get to the bottom" of UFO investigations if elected president. Of course, as with Area 51 and Goddard's work, it could all just be highly classified weapons testing.

The biggest proof of alien life is unlikely to come from Freedom of Information Act releases of long declassified documents. Instead, it'll probably come from a NASA mission to Mars or Europa, or maybe, just maybe, the Breakthrough Listen Initiative that pumped unprecedented amounts of money into the scientific search for technologically advanced life. But who knows. An alien craft could just fall out of the sky. But it's not likely.

Source: Atlas Obscura

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