Image: TheBlackVault/FBI
John Greenewald, the owner and operator of the Black Vault, just received Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in regards to the Guy Hottel Memorandum. The infamous memo, touted across ufology circles as official evidence of extraterrestrial visitation, was first released by the FBI back in 1970, but apparently no one was paying attention until it was posted on the FBI's Vault website in April 2011.
Although the original memorandum contained multiple redactions, the explosive nature of what it said immediately caught the attention of mainstream media and ufologists alike, who assumed the contents of the Hottel memo were based on verified information from official sources informing then director of the FBI J. Edgard Hoover about the Air Force's recovery of three flying saucers and its occupants in New Mexico.
Guy L. Hottel - who is the main protagonist of this story - entered the FBI as a special agent in 1934 and was later appointed acting head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office in 1936. It is during this role as acting head that he received information from a confidential source describing the secret activities the Air Force was conducting in the Southwestern states related to UFOs.
It should be noted that while the memo is indeed validated by the FBI as a historical record of communications between Director Hoover and his subordinates, the information contained therein remains unverified. John Greenewald goes over the peculiarities of this document in the video embedded below.