UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 05 · AUGUST 7, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · DOS-UAP-D001Diplomatic Cable, Brazil, November 14, 1963
This one-page incoming telegram, dated 14 November 1963, went from the American embassy in Rio de Janeiro to the State Department and the consulate in Salvador, Bahia, with a request that it be passed to the Defense Department and NASA. It was sent by the embassy’s science attaché, and records a check on a sensational newspaper story.
What the cable asks
After a bad radiotelephone line the night before, the embassy wanted to be sure it had understood the consulate’s answer correctly: a flat no. The story in question, from a local paper, claimed that around 8 November a large metal “manned balloon” had been found near Salvador with a dead crewman aboard wearing a uniform or spacesuit with strange markings, and that it had left a deep crater on impact.
The embassy summarized what it understood instead: an object had been seen in the area around that date, it had been tentatively identified as a weather-type balloon, and no such object had been found on the ground. The air and science attachés thanked the consulate for its help.
How the story ended
The follow-up cable, DOS-UAP-D002, reports that the consul found the story apparently fabricated and that Brazil’s aeronautics ministry denied any strange object had come down. Together the two files show a crash-retrieval rumor being run down within days, with the U.S. government’s interest apparently limited to confirming that nothing had fallen.
The official description
From war.gov/UFO, released August 7, 2026, quoted in full
This document is a U.S. Department of State diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to the Office of the Secretary of State in Washington, D.C., on November 14, 1963. This cable documents an effort by the Embassy to verify that the Department had assessed certain content published in a local newspaper as inauthentic, following a discussion on a poor-quality telephone connection the previous night.
To ensure both offices were referencing the same reporting, the cable cites descriptive language paraphrased from the press, namely a “large metal manned balloon” and a “dead crewman aboard wearing [a] uniform or spacesuit with strange markings.” The cable concludes with the embassy’s understanding that an object assessed to be a weather balloon had been reported in the vicinity, but that no such object had been found to have crashed. A follow-on correspondence regarding the alleged incident is included in this collection under the title “DOS-UAP-D002.”