FBI's most viewed file is about aliens - not from Roswell

Starting January 24, a new X-Files season, one of television's most enduring series, debuts on FOX. At the attraction, FBI agents Mulder and Scully clash with the federal government, addressing, among other things, hidden knowledge about extraterrestrial life.

Given the series' popularity and the tenacity of UFO conspiracy theories, it is generally not surprising that the most viewed file through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in the FBI library is what some believe to be the X-Files of the UFO. real life. Known as “Memo Hottel”, it has been accessed and viewed over 1 million times since 2011.

The memo is nothing more than a single page detailing a vague report on recovered UFOs, dated March 1950, three years after the famous Roswell incident. He was introduced by FBI agent Guy Hottel, who at the time was the head of the Washington field office. His document mentions an Air Force investigator who claimed to have recovered three flying saucers with the crew intact.

Still according to the report, the ships were found in New Mexico, and the researcher describes the scene as something out of a B movie: they were "circular in shape, with the center high and about 15 meters in diameter."

There is also the profile of the crew members: human-shaped bodies, but less than 1 meter tall, dressed in very fine metallic fabric. Their clothes were similar to those worn by speed pilots.

It is speculated in the text that the ship was shot down after a high-powered military radar interfered with UFO controls. However, it is not clear how they came to this conclusion.

As with all memos of the institution, the Hottel report was sent directly to director J. Edgar Hoover, the founder of the FBI. Following the Air Force investigator's allegations, the record ends with only a short line, stating that the file had not yet been reviewed.

Although the document was originally made available to the public in the 1970s, when Navy physicist Bruce Maccabbe gained access to it through Freedom of Information, the Memo Hottel was not relevant until 2011, when it was added to FBI public archive online. Since then, media have used it as evidence that the entity would be involved with UFOs.

After many theories and comments on the memorandum, the FBI issued a note to end speculation. They note that the report is only a claim and that there was not even concern in investigating the case. Any connection to the Roswell incident is also dropped.

If the FBI's explanations scorn the record, what was the true origin of Memo Hottel? According to some skeptics, he would have emerged from a con artist named Silas Newton. Reading the FBI's own files about Newton, he claimed to have seen crashed UFOs, as well as trying to sell a contraption that could locate underground oil deposits.

This version of the story may overturn the memo, as it claims that Newton told the story of the ships to a broadcaster, who then reported it to several residents, who relayed it to a reporter, who eventually published the event in the newspaper. from Kansas City, the Wyandotte Echo. Through the story is that the Air Force investigator would have discovered what had happened and finally reported it to Hottel. However, the authorities do not make a direct connection between the con artist and the document.

In retrospect, the document appears to be an interdepartmental memo that only existed to tell a non-genuine extraterrestrial story. As with other UFO reports, what can be credited as the true story of aliens on Earth could be nothing more than the result of a giant rumor.

Still, Memo Hottel remains the most viewed file on the site, beating Roswell's actual report, thanks in large part to media attention, which publishes stories about the case.