EOP-UAP-D001, DOS-UAP-D001, DOS-UAP-D002: The Metal Sphere that Fell in Conde, Bahia - a UFO Story Checked and Debunked in Real Time, November 1963

Source file: EOP-UAP-D001_NASC-Inquiry-into-Bahia-Brazil-Incident_November-13-1963.pdf; DOS-UAP-D001_Diplomatic-Cable_Brazil_November-14-1963.pdf; DOS-UAP-D002_Diplomatic-Cable_Brazil_November-20-1963.pdf Originating agency: U.S. Department of State, Embassy Rio de Janeiro and Consulate Salvador; Executive Office of the President, National Aeronautics and Space Council (NASC); CIA Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Document type: FBIS wire report with handwritten annotations; incoming diplomatic cable; airgram A-628 Date: 8 to 20 November 1963 Classification: UNCLASSIFIED (the State Department cables bear National Archives declassification stamps, NND 939551) Page count: 4 VIRIN: 260807-O-D0360-1143 (EOP-UAP-D001), 260807-O-D0360-1141 (DOS-UAP-D001), 260807-O-D0360-1142 (DOS-UAP-D002) PURSUE Release: 5

Summary

Across three short documents, four pages in all, it is possible to follow the entire life cycle of a UFO story: its birth in a radio broadcast, its journey up the American reporting chain to the office of the Executive Secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, and its refutation in under two weeks by an American consul stationed within driving distance of the alleged scene.

The story itself is classic in its details. On 8 November 1963, Radio Tupi of Rio de Janeiro broadcast that a large metal sphere had fallen in the centre of the town of Conde in the state of Bahia. Inside it, so the report went, was a human body. But here, unlike in most cases, there is also an official record of the next stage: what the authorities did with the report, and what they found.

Archivally this is valuable material precisely because it is negative. It provides a baseline for comparison. When a collection contains reports that were checked and not disproved, it matters that it also contains a report that was checked and disproved quickly and unambiguously, and that the bureaucratic route in both cases was much the same.

Research Article

Radio Tupi: the story's birth certificate

The first document in the series, EOP-UAP-D001, is a wire report of the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). The job of FBIS was to monitor radio broadcasts around the world and translate them for the use of the American government, and that is how the Brazilian story entered the system.

The header identifies the source precisely: "RIO DE JANEIRO RADIO TUPI IN PORTUGUESE 2330 8 NOV 63". That is, a Portuguese-language broadcast from Rio de Janeiro at 2330 on 8 November 1963. The text itself is short, and is reproduced here in full:

"REPORTS FROM THE MUNICIPALITY OF CONDE, IN BAIA, SAY A LARGE METAL SPHERE FELL IN THE CENTER OF THE CITY, GOUGING A HOLE FOUR METERS DEEP. THE MYSTERIOUS SPHERE HAS WINDOW SHAPED OPENINGS COVERED WITH THICK GLASS. INSIDE IS A HUMAN BODY DRESSED IN HEAVY CLOTHING BEARING INSCRIPTIONS WHICH CANNOT BE DECIPHERED. THE POPULATION OF CONDE IS INTRIGUED, AND THE AUTHORITIES HAVE BEEN INFORMED."

It is worth noticing what the text does not say. It attributes the account to no named person, does not state who saw the sphere, and cites no authoritative source of any kind. It opens with the word "REPORTS", in the impersonal. The processing line at the foot, "9 NOV 111A RWS/GY", marks the time FBIS handled it the day after the broadcast.

From FBIS to the Space Council

The detail that makes the document interesting is where it ended up. According to the official release summary, the report is excerpted from the files of Edward C. Welsh, Executive Secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council (NASC), a cabinet-level advisory body within the Executive Office of the President that coordinated American space policy from 1958 to 1973. In other words, a radio item about a metal sphere in a small town in north-eastern Brazil reached the desk of one of the senior space officials in the U.S. government within days.

The page carries handwritten annotations dated 13 November 1963. According to the official summary, these record a communication between officials at NASC and the State Department, containing a NASC request that a State Department official query the Embassy in Rio for local verification of the reporting.

This is the pivotal moment in the arc. It is an explicit inter-agency request to check a UFO report, generated inside the Executive Office of the President and directed into the diplomatic channel. Five days elapsed between the broadcast and the request.

The cable from Rio: confirming the unqualified negative

The second document, DOS-UAP-D001, is the direct result. It is an incoming cable to the State Department, number 1054, sent from the Embassy in Rio de Janeiro on 14 November 1963 at 1522Z and addressed also to the Consulate in Salvador. It is marked "FROM SCIATT SIMONPIETRI", that is, from the science attache, and its action line directs it to SCI, the Bureau of International Scientific Affairs.

The content of the cable is slightly surprising, because it is not a question but a verification. The Embassy is seeking to confirm that it correctly understood the Department's position after a poor-quality telephone conversation the previous night. The text of the released copy is partly faded, but the central portion is legible: "YOUR UNQUALIFIED NEGATIVE ON LOCAL NEWSPAPER REPORT TO EFFECT THAT LARGE METAL MANNED BALLOON HAD BEEN FOUND VICINITY SALVADOR APPROXIMATELY NOVEMBER 8, DEAD CREWMAN ABOARD WEARING UNIFORM OR SPACESUIT WITH STRANGE MARKINGS, THAT FOUR-METER-DEEP CRATER FORMED UPON IMPACT."

Note the shift in description. In the radio broadcast it was a metal sphere; in the cable it is a "large metal manned balloon". The description of the object changed within six days, a clear sign of a story circulating in the press rather than of a physical object being examined.

The second passage of the cable adds the most important operational detail: "I UNDERSTAND FURTHER THAT AN OBJECT HAD BEEN SIGHTED ALOFT IN THAT VICINITY AROUND THAT DATE, THAT SAID OBJECT HAD BEEN TENTATIVELY IDENTIFIED AS WEATHER-TYPE BALLOON, BUT THAT NO REPEAT NO SUCH OBJECT HAD BEEN FOUND AGROUND." The doubled emphasis, "NO REPEAT NO", is a cable convention intended to prevent misreading, and it signals how much weight the Embassy attached to the point: something may have been seen in the air, but nothing was found on the ground.

The cable closes with the air and science attaches expressing appreciation for the cooperation, over the Embassy signature "GORDON". Its margins reveal a fairly wide distribution for so short a text: alongside the Bureau of International Scientific Affairs as action office, NSC, CIA, NSA, INR, USIA and ARA are listed for information. A note at the foot of the page records "PASSED DEFENSE AND NASA AT 2:20 PM 11/14/63", and the body carries the instruction "DEPARTMENT PASS DEFENSE AND NASA". The story was therefore being checked simultaneously through the diplomatic channel, the defense channel and the civil space channel.

The report from Salvador: fabricated in Rio

The third document, DOS-UAP-D002, is airgram A-628 of 20 November 1963, and it closes the loop. The airgram records that "Mr. Harold Midkiff, the Consul in Salvador, replied by telegram No. 157 of November 14", and quotes his answer in full. This is the heart of the file:

"Story of strange object descending in region of Conde Bahia apparently fabricated in Rio no such objects seen by anyone in the area according to newspaper reporters and others who rushed there before investigation reports were received Secretary Public Security speculated object might be weather balloon but no such sighting verified."

Midkiff's reasoning is particularly strong because it does not rest on an official denial alone. It rests on the journalists themselves, the very people who hurried to Conde in order to cover the story and found there was nothing there. The suggestion that the object might have been a weather balloon, raised by the Secretary of Public Security, is likewise presented as speculation alone, unsupported by any verified sighting.

In support, Midkiff forwarded by pouch two press clippings from Salvador journals, "respectively Diario de Noticias of November 9, and the Jornal da Bahia of November 11". The first, the airgram states, "states that the Ministry of Aeronautics categorically denies that there was any "strange object" in Conde". The second bears a headline that is a verdict in itself: "The Airship that wasn't there".

And here comes the wry detail that a diplomatic airgram takes the trouble to record. The Jornal da Bahia reporter found that the only news value in the affair was a surprising by-product: "the only newsworthy aspect of the episode is that it produced an astounding by-product: he sent a telegram to his paper from the federal telegraphic office in Conde - by an old morse code transmitter". In other words, the only unusual thing to be found in Conde was an old morse transmitter in the federal telegraph office. The remainder of the sentence is not legible in the released copy.

A point of precision: the date error in the original

A defect in the subject line of DOS-UAP-D002 should be noted explicitly. The subject reads: "Negative Report on UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) Reportedly Sighted Near Salvador, Bahia on November 8, 1964". The year is wrong. The reference line in the very same document cites a cable of 14 November 1963, the body of the airgram is dated 20 November 1963, and the two other documents in the series date the incident to November 1963. This is a clerical error in the original, not a separate incident. The archive flags it because erroneous subject lines are a known source of confusion in catalogues of UFO reporting.

The drafting line at the foot of the airgram identifies its drafter, "SA:ACSimonpietri", that is, the science attache, on the same date of 20 November 1963, and records clearance in substance by the air attache, "AA:RDKalb in substance". One small divergence between the document and the official summary is worth noting: the summary describes the finding as that of the scientific attache at the Consulate in Salvador, while the document itself identifies Midkiff as "the Consul in Salvador".

Significance

The value of this file lies not in the incident but in the process. It documents, end to end and in contemporaneous papers, how a UFO report was checked through official channels: a radio broadcast on 8 November, an FBIS wire report on 9 November, a NASC request to the State Department for verification on 13 November, an Embassy cable and the Consul's denial on 14 November, and a summarising airgram with press clippings on 20 November. Twelve days from broadcast to closed file.

Three conclusions follow. The first is that the American system did in fact take the trouble to check. An unverified item on a foreign radio station activated the science attache at the Embassy, the Consulate a few hundred kilometres from the alleged scene, and the transmission channels to Defense and NASA. The second is that the check was fast and practical: what did people on the spot see, what did the authorities say, and what did the local newspapers print. The third, and the most important for a reader of the archive, is that when the answer was negative, the system recorded it in plain language, without softening.

That is why negative documents belong in the collection no less than positive ones. They set the scale. They show what a closed file looks like, and by the same token they clarify why weight attaches to cases in which the same system looked and could not close. Placing EOP-UAP-D001, DOS-UAP-D001 and DOS-UAP-D002 in the same release as documents such as CIA-UAP-D022, where an impressive figure was likewise overturned but open observations remained, illustrates the difference between a report that collapses at the first check and one that survives it.

A caveat is due: the documents do not explain what generated the story in the first place. Midkiff states that it was apparently fabricated in Rio, but identifies no source, no newspaper and no individual. The weather balloon suggestion remains an unverified conjecture. What the file establishes with certainty is only this: no metal sphere was found in Conde, and no body was found.

Key People

Locations

Incidents

Notable Quotes

"RIO DE JANEIRO RADIO TUPI IN PORTUGUESE 2330 8 NOV 63" -- EOP-UAP-D001, p. 1

"REPORTS FROM THE MUNICIPALITY OF CONDE, IN BAIA, SAY A LARGE METAL SPHERE FELL IN THE CENTER OF THE CITY, GOUGING A HOLE FOUR METERS DEEP." -- EOP-UAP-D001, p. 1

"THE MYSTERIOUS SPHERE HAS WINDOW SHAPED OPENINGS COVERED WITH THICK GLASS. INSIDE IS A HUMAN BODY DRESSED IN HEAVY CLOTHING BEARING INSCRIPTIONS WHICH CANNOT BE DECIPHERED." -- EOP-UAP-D001, p. 1

"THE POPULATION OF CONDE IS INTRIGUED, AND THE AUTHORITIES HAVE BEEN INFORMED." -- EOP-UAP-D001, p. 1

"YOUR UNQUALIFIED NEGATIVE ON LOCAL NEWSPAPER REPORT TO EFFECT THAT LARGE METAL MANNED BALLOON HAD BEEN FOUND VICINITY SALVADOR APPROXIMATELY NOVEMBER 8, DEAD CREWMAN ABOARD WEARING UNIFORM OR SPACESUIT WITH STRANGE MARKINGS, THAT FOUR-METER-DEEP CRATER FORMED UPON IMPACT." -- DOS-UAP-D001, p. 1

"I UNDERSTAND FURTHER THAT AN OBJECT HAD BEEN SIGHTED ALOFT IN THAT VICINITY AROUND THAT DATE, THAT SAID OBJECT HAD BEEN TENTATIVELY IDENTIFIED AS WEATHER-TYPE BALLOON, BUT THAT NO REPEAT NO SUCH OBJECT HAD BEEN FOUND AGROUND." -- DOS-UAP-D001, p. 1

"Story of strange object descending in region of Conde Bahia apparently fabricated in Rio no such objects seen by anyone in the area according to newspaper reporters and others who rushed there before investigation reports were received Secretary Public Security speculated object might be weather balloon but no such sighting verified." -- DOS-UAP-D002, p. 1

"The first of these states that the Ministry of Aeronautics categorically denies that there was any "strange object" in Conde. The other is entitled "The Airship that wasn't there"." -- DOS-UAP-D002, p. 1

"According to the Jornal da Bahia reporter, the only newsworthy aspect of the episode is that it produced an astounding by-product: he sent a telegram to his paper from the federal telegraphic office in Conde - by an old morse code transmitter." -- DOS-UAP-D002, p. 1

"Negative Report on UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) Reportedly Sighted Near Salvador, Bahia on November 8, 1964." -- DOS-UAP-D002, p. 1, subject line; the year 1964 is a clerical error in the original, and every other document dates the incident to November 1963