PURSUE Record — FBI 62-HQ-83894 — Muroc Field CIC affidavits (July 7, 1947): Federal Bureau of Investigation / Counter-Intelligence Corps · Muroc Army Air Field

FBI 62-HQ-83894 — Muroc Field CIC affidavits (July 7, 1947) is a declassified PDF released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of PURSUE Release 01 on May 8, 2026. It consists of Counter-Intelligence Corps affidavits taken at Muroc Army Air Field, California — the U.S. military's premier flight test installation — on a single day in the summer of 1947. The record is one part, drawn from FBI case file 62-HQ-83894, and represents firsthand witness testimony collected by military intelligence in real time.

What this record contains

According to the official release metadata, this document is drawn from FBI headquarters case file 62-HQ-83894 and consists of Counter-Intelligence Corps affidavits taken from witnesses at Muroc Army Air Field on July 7, 1947. The CIC — the Army's wartime and postwar internal security and counterintelligence service — had authority to collect formal sworn statements from military and civilian personnel on matters deemed sensitive to national security. The official description notes that Muroc was at the time the U.S. military's flight test center, hosting first-generation jet aircraft and rocket-propelled test articles, and that the affidavits describe disc-shaped objects observed by multiple witnesses, including Air Force personnel.

The release includes one file part. The public metadata does not enumerate the number of individual affidavits, the ranks or roles of the witnesses beyond noting Air Force personnel, or the precise duration or nature of the sightings beyond what the description blurb states. The document is typed as a PDF, consistent with the digitized paper-record format used throughout the FBI archive series in PURSUE Release 01.

Historical & documentary context

July 7, 1947 sits in one of the most compressed and consequential weeks in the history of American UAP documentation. The Kenneth Arnold sighting over Washington State had occurred less than two weeks earlier on June 24, coining the phrase "flying saucers" in the popular press. Roswell Army Air Field's initial press release announcing a recovered "flying disc" ran on July 8 — one day after the Muroc affidavits were taken. The official description's reference to the Rhodes Phoenix photographs is significant: William Rhodes reported photographing disc-shaped objects over Phoenix on the same date, July 7, and his images were subsequently obtained by both the Army Air Forces and the FBI as part of early investigations. Muroc's affidavits were thus collected at a moment when military and federal agencies were actively building files on aerial phenomena reports from multiple locations simultaneously.

The CIC's involvement underscores that the sightings were treated as a potential counterintelligence matter, not merely a curiosity. Muroc's role as the classified heart of American air power — home to the XP-86, experimental rocket sleds, and personnel with the highest clearances — meant that unknown aerial objects observed there carried immediate security implications. The FBI's coordination with the CIC during this period was part of a broader, contested inter-agency effort to assess whether "flying disc" reports represented Soviet technology, domestic test artifacts, or something else entirely. That institutional friction is itself part of the record's context.

What this does and does not prove

What the metadata establishes is narrow but meaningful: sworn affidavits were taken by military counterintelligence from multiple witnesses, including Air Force personnel, at a classified flight test facility on a specific date. The official description characterizes the objects as "disc-shaped" — but that characterization reflects what witnesses reported in 1947, filtered through the CIC collection process, and should be read accordingly. The record does not establish the nature, origin, or performance characteristics of whatever was observed. It does not constitute a government finding that anomalous objects were present. What it does constitute is contemporaneous, formalized witness testimony collected by a credentialed federal intelligence body at a militarily significant location. The gap between "a sworn statement was taken" and "an extraordinary object was present" is where disciplined analysis must live. Other PURSUE Release 01 coverage demonstrates this same interpretive discipline across the full document set.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

FBI 62-HQ-83894 is part of the historic FBI archive series within PURSUE Release 01 — one of the 120 PDFs in a release that also spans Department of War contemporary mission reports and NASA archive imagery. The FBI documents in the release represent the Bureau's mid-twentieth-century coordination with military counterintelligence on aerial phenomena cases, and this record is among the earliest by incident date in the set. Its inclusion alongside modern sensor records and mission data reflects the release's stated scope: investigative material across decades, coordinated through AARO, offered as an unresolved evidentiary record rather than a concluded finding.

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.