PURSUE Release 01 dropped 162 files. Most of the coverage went to the orb videos and the Apollo 17 photo. Buried in Section 3 of FBI 62-HQ-83894 (serial 62-83894-64, D. M. Ladd memo to Hoover, August 14, 1947) is a six-week-window contradiction sitting at the center of the official 1947 posture. Captain William L. Davidson and Lieutenant Frank M. Brown of Fourth AAF Headquarters, San Francisco, were flying back from Tacoma on August 1, 1947 after investigating the Maury Island disc-fragment claim. Their B-25 crashed at Kelso, Washington. Both officers were killed. They were carrying a box of "alleged fragments" handed to them the night before by Fred Crisman, one of the two Tacoma men claiming a damaged disc had passed over Maury Island. Five anonymous phone calls were placed on July 31 and August 1 to a Tacoma Times reporter and the United Press wireman claiming the plane had been "shot down or sabotaged" because of what it was carrying. The Bureau could not identify the callers. Thirteen days after the crash, Assistant Director D. M. Ladd committed the Bureau's position to Hoover in writing: "Investigation by the Bureau has reflected that this plane was definitely not carrying parts of a disc and there appears to be no substantiation of a sabotage charge." The same memo records what Major General Nathan Twining of Wright Field told Leaveritt G. Richards, aviation editor of the Portland Oregonian: "the AAF instituted this investigation to wash out the disc reports since they are definitely not of AAF origin" That is dated August 14, 1947. Six weeks later, on September 23, 1947, Twining wrote the now-famous AAF internal memo to Brigadier General Schulgen telling his own service the phenomenon was "something real and not visionary or fictitious," with "extreme rates of climb, maneuverability," warranting high-priority study. Same man. Same six-week window. Wash it out for the press. Take it seriously inside the building. Davidson and Brown are the only other in-archive US military deaths tied to a UFO investigation. (Captain Mantell's January 7, 1948 P-51 crash over Fort Knox is the only intercept fatality. Davidson and Brown were investigative, not intercept.) The disposition of the box of fragments after the crash is not in the file. The five anonymous callers were never identified. Crisman, the man who handed Davidson and Brown the box, was later subpoenaed by Jim Garrison in the JFK / Clay Shaw investigation in 1968. Source: FBI 62-HQ-83894, Section 2 pages 142 and 146 (Seattle URGENT teletype, August 12, 1947); Section 3 page 31 (Ladd to Hoover memo, August 14, 1947). PURSUE Release 01 tranche. submitted by /u/PunchbowlPorkSoda [link] [comments]