Death Valley reported disc saucer observation — August 8, 1949

An FBI letter dated August 17,1949 forwarded a secondhand Death Valley crash story to the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. A radio announcer had contacted the FBI on August 8 after receiving a call from a prospector. The caller said that he and a companion, prospecting two or three weeks earlier, had seen a circular object hit the ground nearby. Two small, heavily clothed men supposedly ran from the object and vanished over a ridge. The prospectors then inspected a disc described as about twenty-four feet across and seven feet thick. One allegedly claimed scientific knowledge and characterized a fragment as iridescent, calcium-based and radioactive, with fine green wires. The letter records those assertions; it supplies no laboratory verification or recovered specimen. The announcer could not provide the caller's address. The FBI stated that it was taking no action and sent the information for whatever disposition OSI considered appropriate. An associated military summary bears a hoax annotation, but the two-page file does not provide the supporting investigation behind that classification. August 8 is thus the date of the report reaching the announcer/FBI chain, not a secure crash date. A later newspaper story involving named prospectors Buck Fitzgerald and Mace Garney has similar elements but different dates. Their identities and pursuit details should not silently be inserted into this redacted government letter.