THE DOCUMENTS
CIA-UAP-D022, “Unidentified Flying Object Reported near Puerto Rico, 1965”, six pages, and CIA-UAP-D023, “Briefing Notes for Mr Walter Elder”, two pages. Both are Central Intelligence Agency records from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 05, published at war.gov/ufo, cleared 7 August 2026. D022 is not one document. It is a small file assembled in reverse order, holding two memoranda dated 1 and 11 February 1965, the BYEMAN cover sheets that went with them, and a blank action sheet. D023 is a set of six numbered briefing notes with no date, no originating office, no addressee block and no reference number. Both records concern objects reported near Puerto Rico on 16, 17, 18, 19 and 24 November 1964.
Why this one is worth your time
Start with the date, because the file and its label disagree.
The release title says 1965. The two memoranda inside D022 are dated 1 February and 11 February 1965, and both put the events in November 1964. Search the D022 text for a year and you get 1965 twice, the two memo dates, and 1964 once, the incident period. D023 contains no year at all: its heading names five days in November and stops. The 1965 in the release title and filename is the date of the paperwork. The sightings are November 1964.
The second thing is that PURSUE has published the same case twice, at two classification levels. D023 is the plain narrative at SECRET, with no compartment markings: a destroyer, a fighter, a stern chase, minutes on a scope. D022 is the compartmented follow-through at TOP SECRET, handled via BYEMAN under project OXCART, in which the Navy hands over its radar film, CIA tasks its own analysts, and the answer that comes back is that the object was probably an aeroplane.
What the documents say
D022 is a file, not a document, and it runs backwards. Page 1 is a blank CIA Form 964 (6-63) action sheet, every field empty, with a typed header added on release. Page 2 is a BYEMAN cover sheet, project OXCART, referred to ADB/DSD/SI, carrying a manuscript note reading Prod-Projects UFO’s and the date 11 Feb 65. Pages 3 and 4 are the later memorandum; page 5 is a second BYEMAN cover sheet, control number BYE 2081-65, referred to AD/OSI; page 6 is the earlier one. Read as scanned, the reply arrives before the request. Both memoranda carry TOP SECRET, Handle Via BYEMAN Control System, project OXCART and GROUP 1 excluded from automatic downgrading and declassification, with every TOP SECRET marking struck through on release.
The tasking, 1 February 1965. Memorandum BYE 2081-65, Copy 1, from Jack C. Ledford, Colonel USAF, Assistant Director (Special Activities), to the Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence, subject line “Unidentified Flying Object”. OSI and OSA both received information about a UFO near Puerto Rico during the 18 to 24 November 1964 period. A cable from the Commander, Caribbean Sea Frontier, to CINCLANTFLT, date time group 01/2048Z December, had told the Atlantic Fleet the object was identified by the commanding officer at Ramey as a YF-12A; CIA believed it had convinced the Office of Naval Intelligence otherwise. The Navy had provided, at CIA’s request, the pertinent traffic and the original radar film with prints. OSI is asked, possibly with OEL, to evaluate the radar photography and afterwards return the material for handing back to the Navy.
The answer, 11 February 1965. Memorandum BYE-35171/65, Copy 7 of 8 Copies, from Donald F. Chamberlain, Assistant Director, Scientific Intelligence, to the Assistant Director for Special Activities, referencing BYE-2081/65 and its attachments of 1 Feb 65. Its OCR is unusable, so what follows is read from the page images and is not quotable.
Detailed analysis of the radar photography of 19 November 1964, with a review of the associated correspondence, indicated there was in fact no high-altitude ultra-high-speed UFO north of Puerto Rico in the 18 to 24 November 1964 period. There were, however, apparently valid tracks or observations of unidentified aircraft near the Atlantic Fleet Weapon Range on 16, 17, 18, 19 and 24 November 1964. On the 19 November incident: the US Navy F-8C pilot distinguished the object as a delta shape about the size of a jet fighter with much higher performance, and estimated its speed in excess of Mach 3, while USS Gyatt reported a radar track in excess of 3,800 knots. The photographs, of the SPS-49 radar PPI presentation, showed a good track in excess of 300 nautical miles, the object on a course of about 165 degrees relative to the Gyatt at a relative speed of about 485 knots. They existed at all because the AN/SPS-49 aboard Gyatt was under an evaluation test programme, hence the recording camera.
The conclusion is that the so-called UFO on 19 November was probably a delta-wing fighter of a type with significantly higher climb performance than the F-8C at the 50,000-foot altitude regime, and that on the limited information available the other objects reported between 16 and 24 November would appear to be unidentified aircraft. A fourth paragraph adds context: missile test firings were apparently scheduled at the AFWR in the period, making the area an attractive reconnaissance target; the Gyatt was 325 nautical miles from the eastern tip of Cuba, well within MiG-21 range; and the USSR has a MiG-21 reconnaissance configuration with an AFA-39 camera and possibly SIGINT equipment. It then says there is no evidence at hand to suggest or deny any such activity based in Cuba, with Soviet or Cuban pilots.
D023, the briefing notes. Two pages, SECRET struck through top and bottom, no compartment markings of any kind. The heading, legible on the page image, reads BRIEFING NOTES FOR MR. WALTER N. ELDER, above a subject line reading UNIDENTIFIED OBJECT FLYING IN THE VICINITY OF PUERTO RICO ON 16, 17, 18, 19, AND 24 NOVEMBER. No year follows. Its OCR is badly degraded throughout, so its narrative is likewise reported from the page images.
Six numbered paragraphs. On 19 November the Gyatt picked up a contact tracking in excess of 3,800 knots while working an F-8 Crusader at 35,000 feet; the object slowed and steadied at the fighter’s nine o’clock, about nine miles out. The pilot selected afterburner and closed; at about five miles the object accelerated at extremely high speed in a 20 degree climb and pulled away. It held on the Gyatt’s radar for twenty-one minutes, and on the return to Roosevelt Roads Naval Air Station it closed again from astern to four miles. On 24 November the range again held a high-speed, high-altitude target, which pulled away from another Crusader at Mach .99 and 45,000 feet. The Gyatt confirmed the tracking with motion pictures of the radar scope presentation, and the pilot estimated speed in excess of Mach 3. ONI had no further information, and CIA had asked to be notified of similar incidents in future. The last paragraph is housekeeping: the Gyatt is a Navy surface-to-air missile destroyer equipped with the latest and most accurate radars.
File metadata. Both PDFs carry a Creator of “Highland Technologies, Inc.” and an identical CreationDate of 9 April 1997, consistent with digitisation in the same CIA scanning batch. That is a property of the scans, not of either document.
What the documents do not say
They do not say who Walter Elder was. D023 gives a name and nothing else: no title, no office, no affiliation, no distribution list, no date. Nothing in either file identifies him or places him anywhere, and this briefing does not either. The name is not even in the text layer, which truncates the heading at “MR. WALT”; a keyword search for “elder” across both text files returns nothing.
They do not establish which came first. D023 is undated. It shares the exact date set of the 11 February memorandum and carries tactical detail that memorandum does not. Whether it was written before the OSA tasking, after the OSI answer, or somewhere in between cannot be determined from these two files.
The evidence is not here. The radar film is described and not published, nor are the prints, the pertinent Navy traffic, the CINCLANTFLT cable of 01/2048Z December, or the three attachments to BYE 2081/65 listed at the foot of the 11 February memorandum; the motion pictures of the radar scope that D023 says confirmed the tracking are that same film. Nor is OSI’s working: the 11 February memorandum gives conclusions and a handful of figures, with no methodology, no measurement table and no plot, and nothing records whether OEL took part.
Nothing records what happened next. There is no reply to the 11 February memorandum, no indication of whether the film went back to the Navy as requested, and no record of what OSA, ONI or anyone else made of the finding. The action sheet at the front of D022, which exists to carry routing, dates, actions and comments, is blank in every field.
Almost nobody is named, and no wider machinery appears. The F-8C pilots are not named, nor their squadron; the commanding officer at Ramey is a title; the author of D023 is not identified. Neither record mentions Blue Book, the Air Force UFO programme, or any channel outside CIA and the Navy. And the identification stops where the evidence stops: the 19 November object is probably a delta-wing fighter, the rest are unidentified aircraft, and the MiG-21 paragraph closes on no evidence either way.
From the record
Approved for Release 2026
CIA-UAP-D022, page 1, typed at the head of an otherwise blank CIA Form 964 action sheet; it is the only text on that page that is not a printed form field
regarding a UFO in the vicinity of Puerto Rico during period
CIA-UAP-D022, the 1 February 1965 memorandum, paragraph 1; the sentence begins with OSI and OSA both having received similar information
18-24 November 1964.
CINCLANTFLT was informed that UFO identified by CO Ramey as
CIA-UAP-D022, the same paragraph, on the identification the Navy had been given; the sentence continues that through CIA’s efforts the Office of Naval Intelligence was finally convinced the object was in fact not a YF-12A or similar category Lockheed aircraft
being YF-12A. We think ONI finally convinced, through our
2. Navy has provided, at our request, pertinent traffic
CIA-UAP-D022, the 1 February 1965 memorandum, paragraph 2, on what the Navy handed over; the sentence continues with the accompanying prints of the same film
on this subject, as well as original radar film, Attachment 1,
a thorough scientific analysis of the material relative to a
CIA-UAP-D022, closing the same paragraph, the tasking itself; the request is that OSI, possibly in conjunction with OEL, evaluate the radar photography to determine whether anything further can be gotten from it
high speed, high altitude UFO.
3. The Crusader pilot on the night of the 19th observed the UFO
CIA-UAP-D023, paragraph 3, quoted as the text layer renders it, which is the state of this document’s OCR throughout; on the page image the paragraph reads that the Crusader pilot on the night of the 19th observed the UFO in full moonlight, that weather and visibility were good, and that it was identified as a Delta shaped object about the size of a jet fighter
Where the case connects
The nearest precedent in the collection is Release 04 Briefing 5, on the 1955 CIA memoranda about unconventional aircraft sightings, CIA-UAP-D020 and D021, and the Avro Project Y material with them: CIA weighing an exotic sighting against a known aircraft programme. This is the same operation ten years on with the compartment turned up. The object had already been identified to the Atlantic Fleet as a YF-12A, the file is handled under the control system for the Agency’s own Mach 3 aircraft, and the tasking is signed by the Assistant Director for Special Activities, the office that ran that programme.
Within PURSUE, D022 and D023 sit at the far end of the CIA historical block Release 03 covered, CIA-UAP-D002 to D019, and they are one of two 1960s foreign-sighting clusters in this tranche; the other is the Brazil 1963 set in Release 05 Briefing 8. Between them they show what the Agency’s UFO paperwork looks like once the subject has stopped being a study programme and become correspondence: a cable comes in, a service asks a question, an office answers it, and the file closes.
Nothing in the release dates D023, identifies its author, or says who read it. If a later tranche produces any of that, or the film, it lands in this series when it does.
Read it yourself
CIA-UAP-D022, “Unidentified Flying Object Reported near Puerto Rico, 1965”, is six pages, hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 05; the 11 February 1965 memorandum is pages 3 and 4 of the PDF and the 1 February 1965 memorandum is page 6. CIA-UAP-D023, “Briefing Notes for Mr Walter Elder”, is two pages in the same release. The text layer of both is unreliable: D022’s second memorandum and all of D023 must be read from the page images.
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
- Puerto Rico Radar Contacts 1964
- BYEMAN Control System
- U-2 and OXCART Overflights
- Central Intelligence Agency
References and further reading
- CIA-UAP-D022, “Unidentified Flying Object Reported near Puerto Rico, 1965”, PURSUE Release 05, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- CIA-UAP-D023, “Briefing Notes for Mr Walter Elder”, 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 04 Briefing 5, on the 1955 CIA memoranda and the Avro saucer papers
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 05 Briefing 8, on the Brazil 1963 set
- Signals from the Periphery, Release 03, on the CIA historical block