Set your phasers to "wildly speculate" - a memo released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation details in no unspecific terms the crash of three UFOs and the nine aliens found inside them.
The one-page memo, from March 22, 1950, was sent to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover from Guy Hottel, the head of the FBI's Washington, D.C., field office. Not too surprisingly, since the document was released in April 2011 thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, it has become the most viewed item on the agency's website, with about one million hits.
With the subject of the memo, "FLYING SAUCERS, INFORMATION CONCERNING," the full text of the document reads:
"An investigator for the Air Force stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular in shape with raised centers, approximately 50 feet in diameter. Each one was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only 3 feet tall, dressed in metallic cloth of a very fine texture. Each body was bandaged in a manner similar to the blackout suits used by speed fliers and test pilots."
"According to Mr. [redacted] informant, the saucers were found in New Mexico due to the fact that the Government has a very high-powered radar set-up in that area and it is believed the radar interferes with the controlling mechanism of the saucers."
Hottel adds that "no further evaluation was attempted."
The FBI says its easy to pinpoint the reason behind the document's popularity; the memo is the most viewed item on its site because publications have "erroneously reported that the FBI had posted proof of a UFO crash at Roswell, New Mexico [in 1947] and the recovery of wreckage and alien corpses," the agency explained, according to Yahoo News.
However tempting it might be to believe it, the memo isn't evidence that UFOs exist, the FBI claimed in a blog post earlier in the week. "It is simply a second- or third-hand claim that we never investigated," the FBI wrote. The agency also noted that there was no connection between the memo and the infamous events in Roswell in July 1947, as its dated about three years after the incident.
As for why the FBI never looked into Hottel's memo, the bureau explained: "The FBI has only occasionally been involved in investigating reports of UFOs and extraterrestrials. For a few years after the Roswell incident, Director Hoover did order his agents-the request of the Air Force-verify any UFO sightings. That practice ended in July 1950, four months after the Hottel memo, suggesting that our Washington Field Office didn't think enough of that flying saucer story to look into it."