The FBI is stirring up conspiracy theorists and spy-minded folk across the Internet, with its new online reading room, “The Vault.” Just last week, it made headlines for crowd-sourcing a previously unbreakable code letter and posting files on the murder of the Notorious B.I.G.
Now, an even bigger scoop is rippling through the Web: the Vault has resurfaced a memo pertaining to one of the most mysterious moments in the annals of FBI history, Roswell, N.M., that seems to give some credence to the UFO researchers.
Roswell has been the ground zero of alien conspiracy theorists for decades, ever since a disc-like object crashed into a ranch in the Southwest in 1947. The military maintained it was a surveillance balloon, but UFO researchers claimed otherwise.
The memo making the rounds Monday is the Hottel memo, written March 22, 1950, by Guy Hottel, a special agent in the FBI’s Washington Field Office. The memo was sent to J. Edgar Hoover, then the director of the FBI.
It reads: “An investigator for the Air Forces stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter.
