Newark Field Office, 1952-1967
- Date
- 1952 to 1967
- Place
- New Jersey (Newark, Glen Ridge, Clifton, Union, Jersey City, West Orange, Springfield, Livingston, Fanwood, Lodi, Franklin, Bloomfield, and other N.J. towns), United States
- Record
- Pentagon file
- Assessment
- Not assessed
- Evidence strength
What was reported
A 66-page Newark Field Office collection of UFO-related memoranda, 1952-1967: dozens of citizen phone reports of lights, fireballs, discs and cigar-shaped objects (each referred to the Air Force's OSI, not independently investigated by the FBI); a 1952 Air Force OSI request to background-check a Passaic, NJ photographer and witness who took UFO photos; internal notes on how to handle after-hours saucer calls; and public correspondence with UFO-movement figures (Saucer News editor James Moseley, and a 1963 Air Force public-information officer's letter to Hoover enclosing an issue of 'Saucer News'). Enclosed exhibits include a 1966 AFSCA 'Flying Saucer News' convention issue containing a channeled contact narrative and newspaper clippings of several separate New Jersey/Illinois/Ohio-area sightings.
What officials concluded
No conclusion stated
The Newark office's standard practice was to record the citizen report and refer it to the Air Force OSI for evaluation; no FBI conclusion is offered in this file for any individual sighting.
- Agency
- FBI
- Released in
- 123456
Evidence profile
- Yes: Visual
- No: Infrared
- No: Radar
- No: Video
- No: Photo
- No: Film
- No: Audio
- No: Night vision
- No: Other sensor
- Yes: Civilian
- Yes: Military aircrew
- No: Military ground
- No: Airline crew
- No: Sensor operator
- No: Law enforcement
- No: Scientist
- No: Astronaut
- No: Intelligence official
- No: Other
- No: Light only
- No: Orb or sphere
- No: Disc
- No: Triangle
- Yes: Cylinder
- No: Cube
- No: Other shape
- No: Physiological
- No: Physical trace
- No: Electromagnetic
- No: Sound
- No: Silent
Why this rating The great majority of entries are single-witness, unaided-visual phone reports referred onward without FBI follow-up. The one multi-sensor entry (the June 1954 Neah Bay radar/interceptor case, pages 30-33) carries a tentative conventional-aircraft evaluation from the Air Defense Command itself, capping it below strong.
As described in the file
- Witnesses
- Dozens of separate civilian callers/letter-writers across 15 years; none investigated firsthand by the FBI beyond taking the report and referring it to OSI/Air Force
- Sensors
- Visual (unaided) for essentially all incidents recorded here
- Shape
- Varies by report: cigar-shaped with fins (1957, Glen Ridge), bullet-shaped (1958, Union), disc-shaped, cross-shaped light emission (1957, Clifton), twinkling lights surrounded by haze with a vapor trail (1959, multiple Newark-area callers)
- Lights and colour
- Varies: white pulsation, brilliant white cigar with delta wings, silver bullet shape, orange fan-shaped tail, twinkling lights with haze
- Motion
- Varies by report; several described as silent and fast, one 1959 report as dividing and rejoining in the air
- Duration
- Varies, seconds to several minutes per report
- Altitude or range
- Varies; several thousand feet is typical where estimated
Pentagon files
FBI-UAP-D012, Newark Field Office, 1952-1967
Open the original on war.gov
What the file claims
- Unverified
In 1952 Air Force Technical Intelligence asked the FBI to background-check a Passaic, NJ news photographer and a witness after UFO photographs were taken there.
- Unverified
On 22-24 June 1954 an unknown radar blip was tracked near the Neah Bay/Puget Sound area and two F-86 interceptors from McChord were vectored to intercept, with pilots visually confirming a target before it was tentatively evaluated as probably a known aircraft type.
- Unverified
A 1966 AFSCA magazine enclosed in this file contains a claimed telepathically-received message from an alien calling itself a resident of the planet 'Korendor.'
On the map
40.70° N, 74.20° W, plotted at the centre of the region named in the record
Show on the map