THE DOCUMENTS
USG-UAP-D002, “Interagency Correspondence Concerning Space Fragments 1962 1964”, and EOP-UAP-D002, “Memo on Interagency Coordination for the Recovery of Foreign Materiel May 1963”, two records from the U.S. Department of War’s PURSUE Release 07, published at war.gov/ufo on 23 October 2026. The site files the first under U.S. Government and the second under the Executive Office of the President, and pairs them. Both titles are the release’s, taken from the file names; the war.gov site titles are Interagency Correspondence Concerning Space Fragments, 1962-1964 and Memorandum on Interagency Coordination for the Recovery of Foreign Materiel, May 1963. Neither is a document’s own title. Below, USG-UAP-D002 is the file and EOP-UAP-D002 the memorandum. The file’s 72 pages hold two LBJ Library withdrawal sheets of 1/13/2009 naming the collection National Security File, Files of Charles E. Johnson, and the folder Space Vehicle Fragments - Responsibilities and Procedures (pp. 1, 2, read from the page images); NASA papers of December 1963 to May 1964 on launch fragments (pp. 3 to 14); and the space council’s papers of October 1962 to November 1963: memoranda, letters, a telecon note, slips, receipts, three attendee lists, four handwritten notes, and drafts and copies of a public statement, guidelines and a National Security Action Memorandum (pp. 15 to 72). The items run broadly newest first. Many pages carry CONFIDENTIAL or SECRET struck through, and red NARA declassification stamps of 2009, 2014 and 2017; none carries a release redaction. Strings in a sharp modern typeface stand over the typescript on pp. 17, 48, 57, 58 and 59, on p. 17 over the first CIA attendee line and a council attendee’s surname; the release does not show who added them or what lies beneath. Pages 7, 8, 9, 16, 33, 53, 57 and 60 had no usable text as issued. The memorandum is one typed page with no letterhead, office, council name or classification marking, and a printed DECLASSIFIED box citing NND 968063. This briefing uses PDF pages.
Why this one is worth your time
The file is a working folder on one narrow question: which part of the United States Government receives, identifies, analyses and holds fragments of space vehicles that come down on its territory or otherwise come into its possession. It keeps the drafts as they changed from October 1962 to November 1963, the notes on who objected, and NASA’s guidance of 1963 and 1964 on public queries.
The memorandum sets down, in seven points, a NASA official’s views on the effort in May 1963. The war.gov site describes both records in terms the pages do not print.
What the documents say
October 1962. On 2 October 1962 E. C. Welsh, Executive Secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, wrote to McGeorge Bundy, Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, and to James E. Webb, Administrator of NASA, that a decision was needed on what agencies should have what responsibilities for obtaining, analysing and identifying fragments from space vehicles which fall on U.S. territory, and that there were legal as well as operational problems (pp. 67, 68). A draft statement for a meeting on 17 October has NASA designated for that work, except that fragments readily identifiable as from Department of Defense launches go to the DOD, and has foreign-launched fragments retained by NASA pending their return to the launching country (p. 64). That day Charles E. Johnson of the National Security Council told R. W. Hale of the Space Council by telephone that he supported the designation of NASA, and suggested a National Security Action Memorandum (NSAM) based on the draft (p. 62).
Two papers and a draft NSAM. On 22 October Welsh circulated two drafts, one for consideration as a public release and one of intra-governmental understanding (p. 57). Paragraph 5 of the guidelines has the Department of Defense notify NASA of expected deorbits and alerted collection teams, any objects obtained to be returned initially to NASA and then handled under existing intelligence collection procedures (p. 60). On 23 October Johnson suggested a phrase on otherwise appropriate disposition for the public statement, wrote that if we believed the satellite hostile we would not return it to its point of origin, and recast the guidelines as a draft NSAM for Presidential approval, its number left blank (pp. 53 to 55). All five pages are read from the page images.
November 1962. On 2 November Welsh sent redrafts to seven agency representatives and called a final meeting (p. 48, read from the page image). The redrafted guidelines open paragraph 3 with prompt analysis for intelligence purposes: the DOD gets access to fragments readily identifiable as foreign-launched, which then pass into NASA’s custody, and the sentences on intelligence collection procedures are gone (pp. 50, 51). The attendee list for the meeting of 6 November 1962 has no CIA line (p. 45, read from the page image). That day Welsh sent Johnson the papers “as revised and agreed to at” the meeting, copies having gone to agency heads for formal concurrence (p. 35).
December 1962: the CIA. Lieutenant General Marshall S. Carter, USA, Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, wrote on 7 December that the handling of space vehicle fragments was of interest and concern to the United States intelligence community, and that the matter had been placed before the United States Intelligence Board (USIB) for its 12 December meeting (p. 34, read from the page image; the signature is typed). On 10 December Johnson told Thomas Parrott that departmental clearances had been secured but the Agency clearance “somehow got unstuck”, and that, as far as he was concerned, it would have been avoided had the Space Council brought the Agency into the ad hoc committee from the beginning (p. 32).
1963: the Defense revision. A copy of the guidelines marked as revised by the DOD on 3/1/63 makes the DOD solely responsible for receiving and identifying fragments of its own vehicles; has NASA and other U.S. Government agencies deliver to it, on a priority basis, fragments (including whole vehicles) readily identifiable or suspect as foreign-launched; lets it retain for analysis those that come first into its possession, before NASA custody; and adds State assistance in acquiring fragments that fall on foreign territory (pp. 18, 19, read from the page images). In an undated letter Arnold W. Frutkin, Director, Office of International Programs, NASA, asked Welsh to delete the additions on other agencies and on DOD retention as inconsistent with NASA’s designation (p. 25, read from the page image). On 31 May 1963 Welsh asked John A. McCone, Director of Central Intelligence and Chairman of USIB, to consider the March paper, which he wrote had top-level Defense clearance but, as he now understood, had not been coordinated within the intelligence community (p. 26, read from the page image).
The memorandum, 29 May 1963. Headed to Dr. Welsh and ending with the typed name R. W. Hale under a blue-ink mark, it reports more than an hour with Frutkin and his assistant Marvin Robinson in “his office” on May 28, and a review of the meetings held last year because “he” was away then “and now is very negative on the project” (p. 1). That “he” is Frutkin is an inference; the page does not name him there. Seven points follow on what Frutkin “seems to feel”: no public announcement is now needed; an Executive Order or White House statement “would scare people needlessly”; the problem is overseas, and State would like to point to NASA as the responsible agency without a scary public announcement; DOD and AF want to use NASA for a “cover” but intend to let NASA do no more than return some pieces; CIA and NASA get along fine; NASA should wait on USIB, and would like Frutkin’s comments on the DOD paper passed to the AEC at staff levels; and although NASA was drafting legislation, “they (legal?)” would oppose sending anything to Congress (p. 1). It records no reply and no decision.
Late 1963. On 24 October 1963 Welsh told six addressees, among them Dean Rusk, Secretary of State, that agreement was initially obtained and then variations in preferred language developed, and called a new meeting (p. 23). On 15 November he sent a new draft, doubting that everyone’s interests were completely satisfied with its language (p. 15).
1963 and 1964: launch fragments. A diary note of 16 December 1963 by James R. Morrison of NASA’s Office of International Programs, copied to Johnson, records that for the SA-5 launch NASA put 13,000 lbs. of sand in place of the lead and iron ballast and roughed up the Jupiter nose cone so that it would burn up. It gives a 95 per cent probability that 2,800 lbs. would return, probably as 30 to 39 fragments, and, if 39 pieces reentered, a casualty probability the page equates with one per 50,000 flights; it adds that without the sand the vehicle would be of about the weight and size of Soviet vehicles that had already decayed (pp. 7, 8). The note is read from the page images; its launch and orbit figures, lifetime, tracking aid and what destroying the satellite in orbit would require are not reproduced here. A Response to Query of 8 April 1964 offers answers for use before any known impact, two questions and part of an answer struck by hand beside a note of deletions per Mr. Hausman dated 5/27/64 (pp. 12 to 14). A message from Julian Scheer, Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs, on the orbiting SA-6 booster gives tracking elements but no impact prediction, volunteers nothing and declines to conjecture on the origin of an object (pp. 4 to 6). Both are read from the page images.
What the documents do not say
Neither record shows a policy adopted: the NSAM is a draft with its number blank (p. 54), and every statement and guidelines text in the file is marked as a draft or an attachment or carries no date. Welsh’s attachment of 15 November 1963 is not in the file (p. 15). The withdrawal sheet lists four November 1963 drafts, two titled as guidelines, with no strike line and no open note, under restriction code A, which it defines as closed by Executive Order 13292; its other nine lines are struck through with open dates (pp. 1, 2, read from the page images). That the four are still withheld is an inference; the sheet does not say so. No USIB view, and no reply to the McCone memorandum, is in the file.
UFO, unidentified and saucer return zero in both text layers, which in the file are damaged or missing on many pages; the pages speak of suspected fragments of space vehicles, and of objects whose origin NASA would not conjecture on.
The memorandum carries no letterhead, names no council, prints none of recover, materiel, foreign or intelligence, and defines neither the project nor the DOD paper. Its attribution to the council rests on the site and the pairing. The file neither holds nor cites it: Conference, May 28 and May 29 return zero in the file’s text layer, and no withdrawal line is dated 5/29/63.
The war.gov descriptions are the site’s and go beyond the pages. The site has the Department of Defense analysing and disposing of material from its own missions; the Defense revision makes it solely responsible for receiving and identifying its own fragments (p. 18). The site has State coordinating with foreign governments; the pages give State policy guidance and, in the Defense revision only, help in acquiring fragments on foreign territory (p. 19). The site’s second plan, kept out of the public statements, to make technical use of the material matches no page (exploit and parallel return zero); the guidelines speak of analysis for intelligence purposes. For the memorandum the site says the Departments of State and War sought to use NASA’s civilian standing for discreet recovery, with four purposes; the page reports Frutkin’s views only, names DOD and AF, and prints neither Department nor intelligence.
From the record
ON THE ORIGIN OF AN OBJECT.
USG-UAP-D002, p. 5, paragraph D of the SA-6 message, after a reported impact; the sentence begins: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES DOES THIS AGENCY (GOVERNMENT) CONJECTURE
the minimum information be used to satisfy a given query.
USG-UAP-D002, p. 12, the introduction to the Response to Query of 8 April 1964; the sentence begins: It is suggested that
Delete bracketed words to conform to DOD revisions of paper
USG-UAP-D002, p. 21, the footnote to the draft public statement of 6 November 1962, below two words in brackets; the sentence continues: dated March 1, 1963
There has been more than sufficient time elapsed since this matter was
USG-UAP-D002, p. 23, Welsh’s memorandum of 24 October 1963 calling a new meeting; the sentence continues: first examined for the interested agencies to agree upon a responsible position
small hassel between DOD and CIA concerning the procedural
USG-UAP-D002, p. 32, Johnson’s memorandum of 10 December 1962 to Thomas Parrott, the first sentence; the sentence continues: guidelines paper
development of an NSAM based on the draft statement attached in
USG-UAP-D002, p. 62, Johnson’s telecon note of 17 October 1962 on his call to Hale; the sentence continues: order to get the program under way, even though Justice and State might still have some legal and substantive questions
was away at the time and now is very negative on the project.
EOP-UAP-D002, p. 1, the close of the opening paragraph’s second sentence; the sentence begins: It was necessary to review the background and course of the meetings held last year because he
4. DOD and AF want to use NASA for a “cover” but have no
EOP-UAP-D002, p. 1, point 4 of the seven views Frutkin seems to feel; the sentence continues: intention of letting NASA do anything but return some pieces;
Where the case connects
The memorandum’s date falls between the Defense revision of 1 March 1963 and Welsh’s memorandum of 31 May to McCone (pp. 18, 26 of the file). That its DOD paper is the March revision, and Frutkin’s comments the letter at p. 25 of the file, is an inference from their subjects; neither page cites the other.
No other Release 07 record concerns space vehicles or fragments. EOP-UAP-D001, the subject of Release 05 Briefing 8, a one-page FBIS sheet of November 1963 on a reported sphere in Bahia, Brazil, is the earlier record under the same prefix; the Release 05 catalogue records that it too carries no Executive Office or council identification on its face. Neither record here refers to it.
Read it yourself
USG-UAP-D002, “Interagency Correspondence Concerning Space Fragments 1962 1964”, and EOP-UAP-D002, “Memo on Interagency Coordination for the Recovery of Foreign Materiel May 1963”, are hosted at war.gov in PURSUE Release 07. In the file, the October 1962 papers are pages 52 to 68 and the Defense revision pages 18 and 19.
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
- Space Vehicle Fragments File 1962-1964
- National Aeronautics and Space Council
- Central Intelligence Agency
- Department of State
References and further reading
- USG-UAP-D002, “Interagency Correspondence Concerning Space Fragments 1962 1964”, PURSUE Release 07, U.S. Department of War, hosted at war.gov/ufo
- EOP-UAP-D002, “Memo on Interagency Coordination for the Recovery of Foreign Materiel May 1963”, PURSUE Release 07, 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 05 Briefing 8, on EOP-UAP-D001, DOS-UAP-D001 and DOS-UAP-D002, Brazil, November 1963