THE DOCUMENTS
Three records from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 05, published at war.gov/ufo, cleared 7 August 2026. EOP-UAP-D001, “NASC Inquiry into Bahia Brazil Incident, November 13, 1963”, one page, attributed to the Executive Office of the President, no printed classification, declassification authority NND 968063. DOS-UAP-D001, “Diplomatic Cable, Brazil, November 14, 1963”, one page, UNCLASSIFIED. DOS-UAP-D002, “Diplomatic Cable, Brazil, November 20, 1963”, two pages, UNCLASSIFIED. Both State records were declassified under NND 939551. These are the first records PURSUE has published under an EOP prefix and under a DOS prefix; the State cables in Release 01 sat under other identifiers. Together the three run from a radio broadcast on the night of 8 November 1963 to an airgram of 20 November 1963.
Why this one is worth your time
Most of the files in this series stop before the answer. Something is seen, something is written down, and nothing in the release records what anyone concluded. These three are shaped differently: they carry the claim, the inquiry and the finding, in that order, inside twelve days, across a radio monitoring service, an embassy, a consulate and a foreign ministry.
The claim was not a light in the distance. A Rio station broadcast that a large metal sphere had fallen into the centre of a Bahian town, gouging a hole four metres deep, with windows of thick glass and a human body inside it. Twelve days later the record has the American consul in Salvador reporting that nobody in the area saw any such object, that the story appeared to have been fabricated in Rio, and that the Brazilian Ministry of Aeronautics had denied it categorically.
The set also records who did the chasing. No aircraft was scrambled and no ship diverted. The people who went to Conde were newspaper reporters, and by the consul’s account they got there before the investigation reports did.
What the documents say
The broadcast. EOP-UAP-D001 is a single sheet: an FBIS teletype transcript, item “FBIS 03”, with the processing line 9 NOV 111A RWS/GY at the foot. It carries one item, a Rio de Janeiro broadcast on Radio Tupi, in Portuguese, at 2330 on 8 November 1963, and the transcribed text is six lines. Reports from the municipality of Conde, in Bahia, say a large metal sphere fell in the centre of the city, gouging a hole four metres deep. It has window-shaped openings of thick glass, and inside is a human body in heavy clothing bearing inscriptions which cannot be deciphered. The population is intrigued and the authorities have been informed. That is the whole of it.
The annotations. Two hands have been on the sheet after FBIS. A pencil note dated 11/13, 13 November 1963, records that State, in the person of Nesbitt, was asked to let the annotator know if the Embassy followed with any information. That request is the inquiry the release title refers to, and it is a marginal note rather than a memorandum. A second annotation, in ink, routes the sheet to “SHELDON” with the line “A curious report. Please return to me.” over initials that read as E.C.W.; the sheet is separately initialled “CSS” in blue. Those manuscript readings are inference from the page image and are offered as such: the initials are not fully legible, and no name beyond “SHELDON” is spelled out.
What the sheet does not carry on its face. There is no letterhead, and nothing printed or written on EOP-UAP-D001 identifies the Executive Office of the President or the National Aeronautics and Space Council. The attribution comes from the PURSUE filename and the PDF metadata, which give the author as EOP and the subject as the D001 identifier followed by the NASC inquiry title. What the record itself supports is narrower: it is the first record in PURSUE’s EOP series by its own identifier.
The cable. DOS-UAP-D001 is Embtel 94 of 14 November 1963, from Amembassy Rio de Janeiro to Amconsul Salvador, information copy to SecState as 1054, reference DE RUESUA 264 14/1740Z, filed R 141522Z, unclassified, from the Science Attaché, Simonpietri, signed GORDON for Ambassador Lincoln Gordon. The occasion is administrative: the radiotelephone connection the previous night was weak, so the Embassy asks Salvador to confirm or correct its understanding of what the consulate had said. What it understood was an unqualified negative on a local newspaper report that a large metal manned balloon had been found near Salvador about 8 November, with a dead crewman aboard and a four-metre-deep crater formed on impact. Radio Tupi had described a metal sphere; the report the Embassy is asking about describes a balloon, and neither document remarks on the difference. The cable then adds a second understanding: that an object had been sighted aloft in that vicinity around that date, tentatively identified as a weather-type balloon, but that no such object had been found on the ground. The action office is SCI; information copies go to eleven others including NSC, CIA, NSA and NSF. A note stamp on the face records that the cable was passed to Defense and NASA at 2:20 pm on 14 November 1963.
The airgram. DOS-UAP-D002 is A-628 of 20 November 1963, from Amembassy Rio to the Department of State, information copy to Amconsul Salvador, with a request that the Department pass copies to Defense, for the Air Force, and to NASA. Its subject line calls it a negative report on a UFO, and misdates its own case: it reads Reportedly Sighted Near Salvador, Bahia on November 8, 1964. while the reference line, the airgram date, the drafting line and the underlying broadcast are all 1963. The error is in the original typing, and only in that line.
The consul’s answer. The substance of the airgram is Consul Harold Midkiff’s telegram No. 157 of 14 November, quoted in full. The story of a strange object descending in the region of Conde was apparently fabricated in Rio; no such objects were seen by anyone in the area, according to newspaper reporters and others who rushed there before the investigation reports came in; and the Secretary of Public Security’s guess that it might be a weather balloon was never verified.
The clippings. Midkiff also pouched two Salvadoran newspaper clippings on 14 November. The Diario de Noticias of 9 November carries the Ministry of Aeronautics categorically denying that there was any strange object in Conde. The Jornal da Bahia of 11 November runs a piece under the title “The Airship that wasn’t there”. Per that reporter, the only newsworthy by-product was procedural: he filed his telegram from the federal telegraphic office in Conde, on an old morse code transmitter, and had a reply from Salvador five minutes later.
Who signed it, and how far it went. The airgram is signed for the Ambassador by André C. Simonpietri, Scientific Attaché, on page 2; drafted SA:ACSimonpietri/vmd 11-20-63; cleared AA:RDKalb in substance and POL:CCCarson; approved by John Gordon Mein. Copy counts are written by hand into the distribution grid on the form: NASA 4, AIR 3, ARMY 5, CIA 10, NAVY 5, OSD 15, USIA 8, NSA 3; a lower row adds NSF 2 and NSC 6 beside a struck-through box. The eight agency counts come to 53 copies.
What the documents do not say
Nobody in these files reports seeing anything. Every first-hand statement across the three records is a negative or a denial. The sphere, the body, the inscriptions and the crater exist here only as a broadcast and as a local newspaper report, and neither is attributed to a named witness.
They do not say where the story came from. “Apparently fabricated in Rio” is as far as the record goes: no name, no motive, no mechanism, and no account of how the same claim reached a Rio radio newsroom and a Salvador newspaper in the same week.
The balloon is never confirmed. An object was sighted aloft and tentatively identified as a weather-type balloon, the Secretary of Public Security separately guessed at one, the sighting was never verified and nothing was found on the ground. No launch, operator or recovery is named anywhere in the release.
The supporting material is described but not published. Telegram No. 157 exists in the release only as a block quotation inside D002, and the two clippings went by pouch. No Brazilian government record is here at all: the Ministry of Aeronautics denial reaches the file at two removes, through a newspaper and then a consul.
Nothing records what any recipient made of it. The pencil annotation asks State to pass on anything the Embassy sent, and whether anything was passed is not here; nor is whatever the National Aeronautics and Space Council did with the sheet, nor who E.C.W. and CSS were. The cable went to Defense and NASA within hours and the airgram again in 53 numbered copies, and no Defense, Air Force or NASA record on Conde appears in Release 05.
No pursuit by any government is described: no aircraft, no ship, no radar track, no ground search, no military unit anywhere in the three files.
And the release title runs ahead of the page. It calls EOP-UAP-D001 an inquiry. What the sheet carries is a transcript and a pencil request that State pass along anything further: no tasking, no investigation, no findings.
From the record
RIO DE JANEIRO RADIO TUPI IN PORTUGUESE 2330 8 NOV 63 W
EOP-UAP-D001, the FBIS header line identifying the broadcast the sheet transcribes; the transcribed text follows immediately below
THE MYSTERIOUS SPHERE HAS WINDOW SHAPED OPENINGS
EOP-UAP-D001, the claim at its fullest, mid-transcript; the sentence before this one has the sphere falling in the centre of Conde and gouging a hole four metres deep
COVERED WITH THICK GLASS. INSIDE IS A HUMAN BODY DRESSED IN HEAVY
CLOTHING BEARING INSCRIPTIONS WHICH CANNOT BE DECIPHERED.
NOVEMBER 8, DEAD CREWMAN ABOARD WEARING UNIFORM OR SPACESUIT
DOS-UAP-D001, the Embassy restating the newspaper report on which it wants Salvador to confirm its negative; the mangled words are WITH and FOUR-METER-DEEP, and the sentence closes: upon impact
WITH STRANGE MARKINGS, THAT FOUR-METER-DEAP CRATER FORMED
TENTATIVELY IDENTIFIED AS WEATHER-TYPE BALLOON, BUT THAT NO
DOS-UAP-D001, the second half of the same understanding, on the one object anybody places aloft; the sentence begins with the report that an object had been sighted. DEAP is the cable’s own spelling
REPEAT NO SUCH OBJECT HAD BEEN FOUND AGROUND.
“Story of strange object descending in region of Conde Bahia
DOS-UAP-D002, the opening of Consul Midkiff’s telegram No. 157 of 14 November, quoted in full inside the airgram; it continues: were received, and then to the Secretary of Public Security’s unverified weather balloon
apparently fabricated in Rio no such objects seen by
anyone in the area according to newspaper reporters and
others who rushed there before investigation reports
is entitled “The Airship that wasn’t there”.
DOS-UAP-D002, on the second of the two clippings Midkiff pouched, the Jornal da Bahia of 11 November; the first, the Diario de Noticias of 9 November, has the Ministry of Aeronautics categorically denying there was any strange object in Conde
Where the case connects
State Department traffic has been in this series before. Release 01 Briefing 11 covered the State cables in that tranche, which sat under other identifiers; DOS-UAP-D001 and D002 are the first records PURSUE has published under a DOS prefix, and EOP-UAP-D001 the first under an EOP prefix. The mechanism is the one Release 01 Briefing 6 showed with a Mexico cable, and Release 01 Briefing 5 and Release 01 Briefing 30 with the Greece clusters: a local report reaches a post, an attaché asks the nearest consulate what actually happened, and the answer goes home by cable and then by airgram.
Within this release, Release 05 Briefing 7 covers the other 1960s foreign cluster, Puerto Rico in November 1964, and it also closes on a negative finding. The machinery differs at every step. Puerto Rico was a radar and fighter problem, worked inside compartmented channels and settled by analysts reading film. Conde was worked by a consul, by reporters who had already been to the site and by two newspaper clippings, and the answer travelled to Washington unclassified.
The set also keeps pointing at material it does not contain: telegram No. 157 as a document, the two clippings, whatever the Embassy sent on after 13 November, and whatever the recipients did with 53 copies. Release 05 Briefing 13 collects that pattern across the tranche. If any of it surfaces later, it lands here when it does.
Read it yourself
EOP-UAP-D001, DOS-UAP-D001 and DOS-UAP-D002 are hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 05. The first two are one page each; DOS-UAP-D002 is two, the airgram and the quoted telegram on page 1, the closing sentence and the signature block on page 2.
Read the files. Decide for yourself.
Related wiki entries
The wiki entries below give background on the programme and publisher behind this briefing, and on the subjects it touches.
- PURSUE
- Department of War
- Conde Bahia Incident 1963
- Department of State
- National Aeronautics and Space Council
References and further reading
- EOP-UAP-D001, “NASC Inquiry into Bahia Brazil Incident, November 13, 1963”, PURSUE Release 05, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- DOS-UAP-D001, “Diplomatic Cable, Brazil, November 14, 1963”, PURSUE Release 05, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- DOS-UAP-D002, “Diplomatic Cable, Brazil, November 20, 1963”, PURSUE Release 05, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE), U.S. Department of War, war.gov/ufo
- AARO UAP Records, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, aaro.mil/UAP-Records
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 01 Briefing 11, on the State Department cables
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 05 Briefing 7, on Puerto Rico in November 1964
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 05 Briefing 13, on what this release references and does not contain