Declassified United States government files show federal officials investigated reports that a dead spaceman was found inside a metallic sphere in Brazil in 1963.
The object allegedly crashed into the center of Conde, a municipality in the Brazilian state of Bahia, on November 8, 1963, blasting a hole approximately 13 feet deep. Reports claimed the sphere featured glass-covered windows and contained a human body wearing heavy clothing marked with indecipherable inscriptions.
American officials asked diplomats in Brazil to determine whether an inexplicable object had fallen from the sky. Information about the crash and its occupant circulated among the State Department, the Department of Defense, and NASA.
For six days, officials tracked conflicting reports involving a spacecraft, a dead crewman, and a weather balloon before the account collapsed. The documents were released on Friday as part of the Trump administration's fifth tranche of UFO files, which contained previously unavailable reports, images, and videos.
Radio Report Triggers Inquiry
The account first emerged in a Portuguese-language radio broadcast by Radio Tupi in Rio de Janeiro late on November 8, 1963. A US government transcript recorded the station stating that a large metal sphere had landed in central Conde containing a human body in heavy clothing.
The broadcast noted that local authorities were informed and residents were intrigued, but it offered no physical evidence, witness identities, or photographs. On November 14, the US Embassy in Rio de Janeiro cabled the State Department and the American Consulate in Salvador for clarification.
Embassy officials sought to verify if consulate staff in Salvador had given an "unqualified negative" response to local newspaper coverage. The telegram described the object as a "large metal manned balloon" carrying a "dead crewman" in a "uniform or spacesuit with strange markings."
Diplomats Find No Evidence
Officials had also received word of an object flying over the area that was tentatively identified as a weather balloon, though the telegram stressed no craft had been recovered. A notation indicates the inquiry request was forwarded to NASA and the Defense Department later that afternoon.
A final diplomatic cable sent on November 20 delivered the results of field inquiries in Bahia and dismantled the story. Harold Midkiff, the American consul in Salvador, stated that the account was "apparently fabricated in Rio."
Harold Midkiff reported that journalists and investigators rushed to Conde but found no one who witnessed a strange object descending. The local secretary of public security suggested the object might have been a weather balloon, but that sighting also could not be verified.
Official Denials and Transmission Details
Harold Midkiff forwarded two local newspaper reports from Bahia supporting his conclusions. One report stated that Brazil's Ministry of Aeronautics "categorically" denied any strange object appeared in Conde, while the second ran under the headline "The Airship that wasn't there."
According to the final cable, the only notable outcome of the incident was that a reporter transmitted a story from Conde using an old Morse code machine at the federal telegraph office. The documents do not explain who started the claim or how Radio Tupi obtained it.
An error in the final record lists the event as occurring in November 1964, even though the cable was written in November 1963 about reports from that month. Although US officials examined the claims, the inclusion of the files in the UFO release does not mean the government verified a spacecraft or recovered a body.
