Review: The "Missing" UFO Files
The first tranche of UFO documents was a mixed bag, but what's up with these missing documents? Let's figure out what actually happened.
On May 8th, the Pentagon released “never-before-seen” UFO files to the general public. Within 12 hours, the War Department’s website had nearly 340 million hits on their newly created “UFO” tab. 162 documents were a part of the initial release at 8:00AM EST, but by the afternoon, only 161 remained on the website. In the midst of a rather surprising disclosure of UFO information, the Pentagon seemingly pulled a fast one and retracted a document.
Due to rumors persisting on social media, the Alien Auditor dedicates its first publication to a meticulous review of the first UFO files tranche, seeking to clarify this “missing document”. This publication also includes analysis of an alleged Top-Secret memo, reported to be the “missing document” within hours of the Pentagon’s observed redaction.
The Wayback Machine Review
The first puzzle to solve is the apparent missing document. 162 documents appeared on the Pentagon’s website on Friday morning. This can be verified using the Wayback Machine. Without this online tool, the Alien Auditor would have been otherwise unable to independently trace the digital paper trail.
The first archiving of the site occurred at 12:07:05 GMT / 8:07AM EST, just seven minutes after the site officially went live. It featured 162 documents. At 13:54:59 GMT / 9:54AM EST, an update was made to the website, and now 161 documents appear. After a brief review of the database across both archived uploads, the Alien Auditor discovered the “missing document”.
Featured on the website in the 8:07AM archive were twelve documents “tagged” to NASA (“tagging” refers herein to the “Agency” identifier in the second-to-left column in the UFO files database view). Four untagged documents also appeared in the database, but these were later tagged to NASA in the 9:54AM EST archive. Curiously, however, there were now fifteen NASA documents in this updated archive, meaning one was missing.
Above is a screenshot of NASA-tagged records on the Pentagon’s UFO website, as archived by the Wayback Machine at 8:07AM EST.
Both documents, upon further review, were duplicate entries of the NASA-tagged Gemini 7 transcripts.
At 9:54AM EST, database entry “255_T_763_R1B_TRANSCRIPTS” was taken off the Pentagon’s website. The second entry “NASA-UAP-D3, Gemini 7 TRANSCRIPT, 1965” remained, but featured a cleaner, more readable version of the PDF-formatted transcript.
In other words, the document was refreshed and a duplicate document was removed.
Another minor exception noted in reviewing the early morning archives was the tag update to the document “USPER STATEMENT ABOUT UAP SIGHTING”. It was first tagged to the Department of State at launch but later tagged to FBI, owing to the fact that the document appears to pertain to an FBI investigation of UAP activity.
Except for this tag update and the aforementioned NASA transcript duplicate, no other changes or updates appeared to have occurred with any of the other documents or database entries between both archives saved on Friday morning.
Third-Party Confirmations
For the avoidance of doubt, the Alien Auditor inquired of individuals who are actively hosting third-party repositories for the Pentagon’s UFO files. The site owner of showmeufos.com, noahwebdev, pulled records from the official website as early as 9:30AM EST, roughly twenty minutes before the 9:54AM NASA document update. And though “255_T_763_R1B_TRANSCRIPTS” is not featured in any subsequent internet archives after 9:54AM EST, a document of the same title is available for viewing on his website. Third-party evidence in this case provides further assurance that the duplicate NASA document indeed existed at the time of the 8AM launch. The “NASA-UAP-D3, Gemini 7 TRANSCRIPT, 1965” document is also available for viewing within this repository.
Document Link Tracing
The Alien Auditor has confirmed, as of the time of publication, that the document “255_T_763_R1B_TRANSCRIPTS” does not currently appear in the Pentagon’s viewable database. However, the missing document URL is still active, and the original document can still be viewed at the link below:
https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/255_T_763_R1B_TRANSCRIPTS.pdf
Upon further review, this now serves as the link to the original “NASA-UAP-D3, Gemini 7 TRANSCRIPT, 1965” instance in the publicly viewable database. Essentially, the Pentagon swapped the URL links, exchanging the more readable version of the transcript at the above link and assigning it to the more standardized titling description within the viewable database. Both links are still active, but only one is available to access through the DoD’s website.
Metadata extracted from the website in .csv format confirms the reassignment of the URLs and removal of the duplicate NASA-tagged entry titled in non-standard formatting. However, a more through analysis could not be conducted due to the timing of these extractions occurring after the 9:54AM upload.
Missing Document Audit Opinion
Through these procedures, it is the opinion of the Alien Auditor that the “missing document” in question may be due to benign housekeeping of the identified NASA duplicate. Though the investigation noted above pertains to the time frame of 8:07AM - 9:54AM, no other changes or updates were noted for the rest of Friday, per internet archives.
As of the time of writing this article, 158 documents remain on the Pentagon’s website, meaning three more have gone missing since the aforementioned updates. The remaining documents are outside the scope of this article, though it may be re-visited in a subsequent review. These documents were tagged to the Department of War; however, all DoW-tagged documents were seemingly accounted for on Friday’s Wayback Machine archives.
In conclusion, the “missing document” witnessed by many can most likely be attributed to the Gemini-7 transcript, featuring twice within the database’s early morning launch. And, since the NASA documents in particular gained international interest, the Pentagon decided to remove “255_T_763_R1B_TRANSCRIPTS” and replace the “NASA-UAP-D3, Gemini 7 TRANSCRIPT, 1965” instance with a more readable copy.
Social Media Rumors
Millions of people witnessed the “document number decrease” in real-time, as the Pentagon’s UFO database features a running calculator for the total number of documents available for public viewing. This phenomenon led to speculation as to why any document would be removed after public release, but reporting on what the document actually was did not surface online until early Friday afternoon. This timeline needs to be addressed, as social media rumors led to multiple corroborations that a Top-Secret memorandum was posted on the War Department’s website, then later retracted from the Friday morning file release.
At 12:41PM EST, r/UFOB was graced with the presence of a now-deleted user account. The post titled: “Anyone seen this file before from the disclosure?” posted a screenshot of the following document:
Similar posts likely appeared on a handful of other UFO-themed subreddits, as four minutes later, at 12:45PM EST, another post also titled “Anyone seen this file before from the disclosure?” appeared on r/UFO. For whatever reason, this particular post had more engagement in the comments.
Some commenters on the second post were quick to decipher the meaning of the mysterious “RAZIEL” codename, or the nature of the cargo in CVN-69’s possession. One redditor, u/SkyeJamire32, said the document was available to view “before it was removed” at the pasted URL below:
https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/memo_jcs_admiral_5.08.2026.pdf
It is important to note that, after a review of social media posts, the Reddit comment above appears to be the first mention online of the alleged “missing document” and related link. However, an exhaustive review was not conducted to verify this assertion. The Alien Auditor attempted to inquire of the Reddit user u/SkyJamire32 as to the nature of the provided link but has yet to receive a response.
One comment thread of sleuths was quick to point out inconsistencies with regard to the names appearing in the memo. Reddit user u/PsiloCyan95 commented, “The problem is that there is no listed CO of the Eisenhower being named J.W. Jones. Current record seems to indicate that it was Richard Macke.” The ensuing comment chain led to the revelation of the USS Eisenhower’s Command History in 1985, and with it the smoking gun evidence that the above document was fabricated.
To PsiloCyan95’s point, the Commanding Officer of the USS Eisenhower in 1985 is listed as Captain Richard C. Macke, USN. Additionally, the USS Eisenhower, from the time period of May 8 - July 8 was in-port at Norfolk, VA. Ships hardly ever leave their home ports for even a short period of time without documentation, especially flagship vessels such as aircraft carriers. Given the date of this letter being May 28, 1985, the presented evidence suggests this document is inconsistent with recorded naval history.
At 1:25PM, an X account with 150,000 followers @Truthpole posted the alleged memo along with the alleged link, potentially sourced from the aforementioned Reddit user. The post garnered over 100k views and was subsequently re-posted across various engagement-driven UFO and paranormal news accounts. At the time of Truthpole’s post, the alleged link to the Pentagon’s website was apparently still active, but soon enough, many individuals clicked the link only for the website to return “Not Found”. Redditors likely noticed this as well, and probably before X, given the timing of these posts.
By the afternoon, rumors started circulating online that the Pentagon retracted a document from the Friday morning release, and that the above memo circulating online was a screenshot “someone” had managed to save before the cigarette smoking man pulled the plug. It was around this point that the Alien Auditor became personally aware of the rumors regarding the “missing document”, and simultaneously D. Dean Johnson on X analyzed several inconsistencies of the alleged memo in a comprehensive thread post. Many of the issues raised were reflected in the aforementioned r/UFO comment thread.
“Alleged”
The Alien Auditor makes use of the word “alleged” when referring to the provenance and origin of both the memo and ascribed link as reported in social media due to the likely possibility that both the memo and related link were fabricated. However, multiple sources have asserted the document was visible prior to it being removed from the War Department website, in some cases hours before the posts went live on Reddit. The Alien Auditor directly reached out to several public and private individuals in the UFO community who were the first to comment and/or view this alleged memo.
Those who viewed the document on the War Department’s website indicated the original database entry had no accompanying text and featured the one-page memorandum. This description is juxtaposed by the other documents in the first tranche, generally characterized as multi-page document bundles, joined by accompanying text.
The Alien Auditor further considered the possibility that the URL was fabricated, as the manipulation of the website link to any other potential document link (ie. “MJ_12.pdf” , “Bacon_Strips.pdf”, “Super_Hot_Fire.mp4”) also returns the same “Not found” message. That alone would otherwise be an elementary explanation of this entire review, if not for the multiple independent external confirmations that:
The alleged link was accessible to several parties up until 1:30PM Friday.
The entry in the DoW’s website view featured no accompanying text.
Inconsistencies in the naval service record and known whereabouts of CVN-69, as outlined in the USS Eisenhower’s Command History of 1985, calls into question the authenticity of the document outright. However, confirmations received that said document was in fact visible on the War Department’s website at the alleged link makes reporting difficult. The Alien Auditor hopes this article’s publication encourages a sober, community-wide review of the chain of events surrounding the Friday morning release and purported missing document.
Audit Conclusions
Through these procedures, the Alien Auditor asserts the following:
The “missing document” witnessed by many on Friday was most likely the result of database clean-up regarding the NASA Gemini 7 transcript. It was initially submitted as two separate instances in the database, and site admins swapped the URL associations to the landing page and removed the duplicate entry. This fact pattern has been substantially confirmed by manual tracing and third-party confirmations with separate document repositories, and further clarified through metadata analysis.
The “USS Eisenhower” memo likely appeared first on Reddit around 12:41PM EST, more than two hours after the website was refreshed at 9:54AM to remove the duplicate NASA transcript. No third-party repository, including showmeufos.com, had record of the supposed USS Eisenhower document, assuming that it was removed between 8:00AM - 9:54AM. All 162 documents were accounted for during this time frame and confirmed through third-party repositories.
A separate Redditor from the OP of the Eisenhower memo posted the alleged “missing document” link, but it may have never been valid in the first place. This assertion is supported by the manual tracing of the alleged link in the Wayback Machine archives, the testing of intentionally non-existent documents to return a similar “Not found” message, and aforementioned confirmations of third-party database repositories along with metadata analysis.
The Alien Auditor assesses that bad faith actors may have capitalized on the opportunity, attributed to the removal of the duplicate Gemini 7 transcript, to float a fake document online. The perfect storm of heightened public interest in the files’ release, the Pentagon’s running calculator of UFO files, and said-calculator’s signaling of a “missing document” fanned the flames of public speculation, creating the perfect environment to pass off a fabricated document as part of the official release.
This article is published with the intention of reporting these findings in an accurate and deliberative manner, with the hope that these findings encourage a sober review by the community surrounding the events of May 8th.
Acknowledgements
Should you have any information pertinent to this investigation, such as details not mentioned previously, please direct communications to public relations coordinator KermDawgENT on X.
Analysis performed herein was conducted in a rigorous manner as a basis for fact-driven community discussion.
Thanks once again to all parties who responded to requests for inquiry and supporting documentation.
Very Truly Yours,
The Alien Auditor
There are multiple versions of the "USS Eisenhower / Raziel" document going around. Which I think you fail to take into account in this post.
https://imgur.com/a/raziel-grHxTsT
The 1986 version seems to have the more accurate information. There seemed to be a concerted effort to promote the 1985 version.. and scrub the 1986 version.