PURSUE Record — FBI 62-HQ-83894 — La Paz seventh report, Project Twinkle directive: Federal Bureau of Investigation · New Mexico — Sandia / Los Alamos / Holloma

FBI case file 62-HQ-83894 is a declassified PDF released on May 8, 2026, as part of PURSUE Release 01 — the U.S. Department of War's inaugural coordinated disclosure of UAP-related government records. The document is a single-part FBI file covering Dr. Lincoln La Paz's seventh formal report on the New Mexico green fireball phenomenon, along with the directive that initiated Project Twinkle. It spans the 1949–1950 timeframe and centers on the geographic triangle formed by Sandia Base, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.

What this record contains

The file is catalogued under FBI headquarters case number 62-HQ-83894 and was released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of the 120-PDF component of PURSUE Release 01. According to the official description, it documents La Paz's seventh report on a sustained wave of anomalous green fireball sightings that began in December 1948 over the Sandia–Los Alamos–Holloman corridor — a region of acute national security sensitivity given the nuclear facilities operating there. La Paz, a meteoricist at the University of New Mexico, was among the leading scientific voices on the case and concluded in his analysis that the objects did not behave like natural meteoric phenomena.

The record also contains the directive that led to the establishment of Project Twinkle — a formal observational contract issued to Land-Air Inc. and administered out of Holloman Air Force Base. Project Twinkle's stated purpose was to instrument the phenomenon: to capture green fireball events on film and with spectrographic equipment so that their physical properties could be measured rather than merely reported. The public release does not include granular witness testimony or classified appendices beyond what the description blurb specifies; the file is presented as a single part with no additional volumes listed in this release.

Historical & documentary context

The late 1940s were a period of institutional anxiety about anomalous aerial phenomena, particularly over nuclear installations. The FBI's involvement in UAP-adjacent investigations during this era was less about paranormal inquiry and more about counterintelligence: the Bureau wanted to establish whether the green fireballs represented foreign — specifically Soviet — reconnaissance or weapons testing. La Paz's seventh report arriving as a formal FBI record reflects how seriously federal agencies treated unexplained aerial activity over Los Alamos and Sandia in the years immediately following the first Soviet atomic test in August 1949. Project Twinkle, born from the directive contained in this file, represented a rare attempt to move beyond eyewitness collection toward instrumental measurement of a UAP-class phenomenon.

The FBI files from this era, including this one, are best understood as investigative correspondence — summaries, referrals, and directives passed between field offices, scientific consultants, and military liaison — rather than adjudicated conclusions. La Paz's non-meteoric interpretation was his scientific judgment at the time, not a consensus finding. Project Twinkle ultimately produced inconclusive results before it was terminated, and the green fireball wave itself was never formally resolved.

What this does and does not prove

What the record documents is that a credentialed scientist filed repeated formal reports arguing that a sustained aerial phenomenon over sensitive nuclear sites could not be explained as ordinary meteors, and that this assessment was taken seriously enough to generate a funded observational program. What it does not prove is the nature of the objects. La Paz's non-meteoric conclusion was a scientific inference based on trajectory, color, and behavior characteristics as he understood them in 1949 — it is not a determination that the objects were artificial, foreign, or of any particular origin. The PURSUE release presents this file as investigative material, not a verdict. "Unresolved" in this context means the historical record left no definitive explanation, not that any extraordinary claim has been validated.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

This file belongs to the FBI historical archive series within PURSUE Release 01 — one of 120 PDFs spanning agency records from 1947 onward. It sits alongside other mid-century FBI and military documents that together map the federal government's early systematic engagement with UAP-class reports. Readers following the full release can trace the institutional progression from ad hoc field reports through named projects like Twinkle on the SkyLens UAP files page, which catalogues all 162 records in the release alongside their metadata and source links.

Editorial note: This analysis is independent commentary on a publicly released document. The original record, source links, and full release metadata are catalogued on the SkyLens UAP files page alongside every other case in the PURSUE Release 01 set.