UPDATE

According to The Daily Mail, Above Top Secret has evidence that the following story is an elaborate hoax.

Despite the elaborate description, the Hottel memo has been exposed as nothing more than misinformation provided by a scam artist named Silas Newtwon, NBC News reported.

Above Top Secret honcho Mark Allin told the network: ‘The memo is based on a hoax that was carried out by a convicted con man named Silas Newton, and it was debunked years ago.

‘It’s a pretty good and interesting hoax story, to be certain, but there is no value in it beyond that.’

So it is an interesting piece of the history of Roswell whether as a hoax or a piece of history. In either case it really offers nothing to the case but a bit of color.

Our thanks goes out to Scott today for finding this story, it is one of those pieces of the jigsaw puzzle of mystery that surrounds the Roswell Incident. This story involves a memorandum written by Guy Hottel while serving as Special Agent in charge of the Washington Bureau of the FBI. Not the same as Director, which would have been J. Edgar Hoover at this point in bureau history. Think along the lines of Director Skinner in the X_Files.

Here is some history on Guy Hottel:

Guy Hottel Biography
Guy L. Hottel was born around 1902. He was a graduate of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where he was a star football player. He was later inducted into the university’s athletic hall of fame. He entered the FBI as a special agent in 1934. In December 1936, he was named acting head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office; he was appointed special agent in charge the following May and served until March 1941. Hottel was re-appointed special agent in charge in February 1943 and served until 1951, when he took a position in the Identification Division. He retired in 1955. Hottel was married three times and had two sons. Following his FBI career, Hottel served as executive secretary of the Horseman’s Benevolent Association. He died in June 1990.

Now there are many conspiracies surrounding UFO disclosure and really every law enforcement agency from federal down to municipal. But to give a little perspective I have looked up what the FBI is actually mandated to do?

Overview

What is the FBI?

The FBI is an intelligence-driven and threat-focused national security organization with both intelligence and law enforcement responsibilities—the principal investigative arm of the U.S. Department of Justice and a full member of the U.S. Intelligence Community. It has the authority and responsibility to investigate specific crimes assigned to it and to provide other law enforcement agencies with cooperative services, such as fingerprint identification, laboratory examinations, and training. The FBI also gathers, shares, and analyzes intelligence—both to support its own investigations and those of its partners and to better understand and combat the security threats facing the United States.

What is the mission of the FBI?

The mission of the FBI is to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foreign intelligence threats, to uphold and enforce the criminal laws of the United States, and to provide leadership and criminal justice services to federal, state, municipal, and international agencies and partners. It performs these responsibilities in a way that is responsive to the needs of the public and faithful to the Constitution of the United States.

Is the FBI a type of national police force?

No. The FBI is a national security organization that works closely with many partners around the country and across the globe to address the most serious security threats facing this nation. We are one of many federal agencies with law enforcement responsibilities.

How accurately is the FBI portrayed in books, television shows, and motion pictures?

Any author, television script writer, or producer may consult with the FBI about closed cases or our operations, services, or history. However, there is no requirement that they do so, and the FBI does not edit or approve their work. Some authors, television programs, or motion picture producers offer reasonably accurate presentations of our responsibilities, investigations, and procedures in their story lines, while others present their own interpretations or introduce fictional events, persons, or places for dramatic effect. Learn more about working with the FBI.

What are the primary investigative functions of the FBI?

The FBI’s investigative authority is the broadest of all federal law enforcement agencies. The FBI has divided its investigations into a number of programs, such as domestic and international terrorism, foreign counterintelligence, cyber, public corruption, civil rights, organized crime/drugs, white-collar crime, violent crimes and major offenders, and applicant matters. The FBI’s investigative philosophy emphasizes close relations and information sharing with other federal, state, local, and international law enforcement and intelligence agencies. A significant number of FBI investigations are conducted in concert with other law enforcement agencies or as part of joint task forces.

Who monitors or oversees the FBI?

The FBI’s activities are closely and regularly scrutinized by a variety of entities. Congress—through several oversight committees in the Senate and House—reviews the FBI’s budget appropriations, programs, and selected investigations. The results of FBI investigations are often reviewed by the judicial system during court proceedings. Within the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI is responsible to the attorney general, and it reports its findings to U.S. Attorneys across the country. The FBI’s intelligence activities are overseen by the Director of National Intelligence.

There is A Lot more of this for anyone interested at the FBI.GOV FAQ but this is more than enough to determine that UFOs do not really fall into the typical FBI sphere of investigation.

Moving on now to the story of The Memo

UFOs or No?
The Guy Hottel Memo

03/25/13

It’s the most popular file in the FBI Vault—our high-tech electronic reading room housing various Bureau records released under the Freedom of Information Act. Over the past two years, this file has been viewed nearly a million times. Yet, it is only a single page, relaying an unconfirmed report that the FBI never even followed up on.

The file in question is a memo dated March 22, 1950—63 years ago last week. It was authored by Guy Hottel, then head of our field office in Washington, D.C. (see sidebar below for a brief biography). Like all memos to FBI Headquarters at that time, it was addressed to Director J. Edgar Hoover and recorded and indexed in FBI records.

The subject of the memo was anything but ordinary. It related a story told to one of our agents by a third party who said an Air Force investigator had reported that three “flying saucers” were recovered in New Mexico. The memo provided the following detail:

“They [the saucers] were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots.”

After relaying an informant’s claim that the saucers had been found because the government’s “high-powered radar” in the area had interfered with “the controlling mechanism of the saucers,” the memo ends simply by saying that “[n]o further evaluation was attempted” concerning the matter by the FBI agent.

That might have been the end of this particular story, just another informational dead end in the FBI files. But when we launched the Vault in April 2011, some media outlets noticed the Hottel memo and erroneously reported that the FBI had posted proof of a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico and the recovery of wreckage and alien corpses. The resulting stories went viral, and traffic to the new Vault soared.So what’s the real story? A few facts to keep in mind:

First, the Hottel memo isn’t new. It was first released publicly in the late 1970s and had been posted on the FBI website for several years prior to the launch of the Vault.

Second, the Hottel memo is dated nearly three years after the infamous events in Roswell in July 1947. There is no reason to believe the two are connected. The FBI file on Roswell (another popular page) is posted elsewhere on the Vault.

Third, as noted in an earlier story, the FBI has only occasionally been involved in investigating reports of UFOs and extraterrestrials. For a few years after the Roswell incident, Director Hoover did order his agents—at the request of the Air Force—to verify any UFO sightings. That practice ended in July 1950, four months after the Hottel memo, suggesting that our Washington Field Office didn’t think enough of that flying saucer story to look into 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. 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.

Sorry, no smoking gun on UFOs. The mystery remains…

Resources:
The Guy Hottel memo Records on other unexplained Phenomena

There is only really one statement in the memo that bothers me, and it is this:

According to Mr. <blanked out> informant, the saucers were found in New Mexico due to the fact that the government has a very high powered radar set up in that area and it is believed the radar interferes with the controlling mechanisms of the saucers.

C’mon. The very naivete of this statement should easily serve to discredit it. The only difference between radar and radio is frequency. Both employ wavelengths in the electro-magnetic spectrum, which is also emitted by far more powerful pulsars and galactic sources. Heck, Jupiter is a radio source. If radio frequencies were going to interfere with controlling mechanisms (as if steam-punk aliens were flying around in craft using vacuum tubes and brass control rods) then they would never be able to navigate across interstellar space.

We have far more powerful and sophisticated radars being employed today as well as microwave transmissions to every cell and wi fi device to  the degree that we are running out of open frequencies, and there are entrepreneurs trying to develop cell phones and other wireless devices that recharge themselves from the ambient energy of all the various signals that encompass us in our everyday lives. Yes, really. UFOs should be falling out of the sky.

Be sure to check out the FBI Vaults for other information, fun facts and bits of Trivia.

Trivia question of the day: What well known entertainer who changed his name to an American city was born in Roswell NM in 1943?
See bottom of page for the answer.

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Trivia Answer:
John Deutschendorf who changed his name to John Denver.

And the FBI has a file on him.