1952 Chadwell – Smith CIA Memo
Following the wave of UFO sightings over Washington DC in 1952 the Director of Scientific Intelligence produced a memo to the CIA director Walter Bedell Smith in which he admits the sightings can not be attributed to any natural phenomenon nor to a known technology.
From H.Marshall Chadwell, Director of Scientific Intelligence CIA to the then director of the Agency Walter Bedell Smith on the subject of “Unidentified Flying Objects”. This memo was a result of the 1952 flood of UFO sightings across the United States. In that year a formation of UFOs were spotted i.a. over the Capitol (the Washington 1952 incident also known as the “Washington flap” or the “Washington National Airport Sightings”).
Section 4 of the document reads as follows:
(…) At this time the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention. (…) Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major US defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles.