Socorro landing (Lonnie Zamora)

Police officer Lonnie Zamora, chasing a speeder, heard a roar, saw a flame and found a white egg-shaped object on legs in a gully with two small figures in white beside it; it rose with a roar and blue flame and left. FBI agent Arthur Byrnes reached the site within about half an hour and examined four rectangular depressions and burned brush; his report and Zamora's notes are in the FBI files released through PURSUE, with the agent vouching for Zamora as sober and not given to fantasy. Project Blue Book listed it as unidentified. A student hoax and a test vehicle have been proposed and never shown.

None established; a student hoax or experimental vehicle proposed

• Document65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Serial_438Release 1

  65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Serial_438

  FBI Albuquerque report on the famous Lonnie Zamora Socorro, New Mexico case of 24 April 1964. FBI Special Agent D. Arthur Byrnes, Jr. was on other business at the Socorro State Police office when a radio call brought him to the site within about 30 minutes; he personally examined four rectangular ground depressions (~16x6 in, ~2 in deep) with burned grass clumps inside them and three smaller circular impressions, and vouches for Officer Zamora (known to him five years) as 'sober, industrious, and conscientious... not given to fantasy.' The serial also contains what appears to be Zamora's own field-interview notes (badly OCR'd): an egg/oval-shaped object with a roar, blue flame underneath, and two figures in white coveralls near it before it departed.

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• Document65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_009Release 1

  65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_009

  Correspondence section of the same 62-HQ-83894 file, dominated by FBI Headquarters' handling of Major Donald E. Keyhoe and his National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). A September 1958 internal memo instructs that Keyhoe's pointed written questions (e.g. whether agents told witnesses not to discuss sightings) be answered 'in a very general way' to avoid engaging him further, after describing him internally as a writer whose material the Bureau has 'found from previous experience' to be 'irresponsible.' Also includes a July 1958 Aerial Phenomena Research Group (Seattle) press release concluding, from ~5,000 accounts, that UFOs are likely extraterrestrial craft, plus form-letter public appeals for witness reports and unremarkable citizen mail (including one asking if the FBI could confirm a magazine photo of agents with a tiny alien).

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• Document65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_010Release 1

  65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_010

  Press-clipping and correspondence section centered on contactee George Adamski (a long magazine retrospective on his life and claimed spacecraft trips, published after his 1965 death) and a large cluster of March 1966 Michigan newspaper clippings ('swamp gas' wave: radar-tracked object near a Michigan Air Force base, multiple town sightings including Lewiston and Dexter). Also includes a 1966 FBI Los Angeles memo checking whether a flying-saucer club magazine article (a supposed short-wave 'message' from a spacecraft crew) expounded Communist Party positions; the Bureau found no derogatory information and took no further action.

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• Wikipedia: Lonnie Zamora incidenten.wikipedia.org