PURSUE Record — FBI 62-HQ-83894 — Stanfield Lapaz Holloman February 1950: Federal Bureau of Investigation · United States — case-specific (see file content) · 1

FBI case file 62-HQ-83894, released as part of PURSUE Release 01 on May 8, 2026, is a declassified single-part PDF from the Bureau's long-running flying-discs investigation series — a corpus spanning nearly three decades, from 1944 to 1973. The case slug, stanfield-lapaz-holloman-february-1950, anchors the record to a specific moment in February 1950 and to names and places that carried significant weight in early federal investigations of anomalous aerial phenomena. It is one of 120 PDFs included in the release.

What this record contains

The releasing agency is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the document is drawn from internal case file 62-HQ-83894. The incident date is February 1950; the location is within the United States, though the public release inventory does not specify precise coordinates beyond what the slug implies. The official description notes that "case-specific metadata is sparse in the public release inventory," and that the analysis "relies on the slug semantics, the broader institutional posture of the FBI during the case period, and the temporal and geographic context." That caveat is worth taking seriously: this editorial cannot go beyond it.

The three terms embedded in the slug — stanfield, lapaz, and holloman — each carry documentary weight. "Lapaz" almost certainly refers to Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, the University of New Mexico astronomer who served as a principal scientific consultant to the Air Force and FBI in their investigation of anomalous aerial objects over the Southwest. "Holloman" points toward Holloman Air Force Base in Otero County, New Mexico, a key installation in early Cold War aerospace testing. "Stanfield" most likely identifies a witness, agent, or correspondent named in the underlying file. The public release does not confirm these identifications, and they should be read as informed inference from slug semantics rather than established fact.

Historical & documentary context

By February 1950, the FBI had been formally engaged with flying-disc reports for nearly three years. The New Mexico corridor — running from Los Alamos and Sandia through White Sands and on to Holloman — was at the center of that attention. A series of anomalous green fireballs reported over sensitive military installations beginning in late 1948 generated enough concern that the Air Force launched Project Twinkle in 1950 specifically to instrument-track them. Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, if that is the figure referenced here, was among the most scientifically credible investigators of that phenomenon — a trained meteoriticist who argued, controversially, that the fireballs did not behave like natural meteors. FBI files from this era typically consist of internal memoranda, witness interview summaries, correspondence with Air Force counterparts, and routing slips. The 62-HQ series prefix denotes a miscellaneous non-subversive category, consistent with how the Bureau classified aerial anomaly cases that did not meet the threshold of a counterintelligence or criminal investigation.

What this does and does not prove

The documented facts here are narrow: a federal agency opened and maintained a case file touching on an aerial incident or incidents associated with the Holloman area in February 1950, involving at minimum one named individual whose name echoes that of a prominent scientific consultant to early UAP investigations. Nothing in the public release inventory — and nothing in this editorial — establishes what was observed, who reported it, or what the file ultimately concluded. "Unresolved" in the PURSUE inventory means the case has not been given an official explanation; it does not mean the underlying events were anomalous in any deeper sense. The sparse metadata makes confident interpretation impossible, and readers should treat this as one data point in a much larger evidentiary record.

How it fits PURSUE Release 01

This record belongs to the FBI archive series within PURSUE Release 01 — historic Bureau flying-disc files that complement the Department of War's contemporary military sensor records and NASA archive imagery elsewhere in the 162-document release. The FBI tranche as a whole documents how a domestic law-enforcement agency interfaced with the early federal UAP apparatus. Case 62-HQ-83894 sits at one of the most historically significant intersections in that archive: the Southwest corridor, the pivotal year 1950, and the names of institutions and individuals who shaped how the U.S. government approached anomalous aerial phenomena for the following two decades. Other PURSUE coverage on this blog addresses additional cases from the same release.

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.