Sightings of Flying Saucers or Unconventional Aircraft

This memorandum, addressed to the Director of Central Intelligence by Herbert Scoville, Jr., Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, provides an assessment of reported sightings of unconventional aircraft. The document notes that four participants in an observation were debriefed. The witnesses reported seeing a greenish-yellow light at 1310 hours, followed by a shadowy object with a single light, and later a triangular object with three lights that appeared to be ejected from a launching site. The witnesses described the object as rotating or whirling during its initial trajectory. The assessment concludes that these observations can likely be explained as stray climbing aircraft or missiles. It explicitly states that the current evidence is not sufficiently firm to conclude that the Soviet Union has developed or is operating a radically new type of aircraft.