ufo wiki

NBC News: Unexplained aerial encounter left U.S. intelligence officer 'virtually speechless' (PURSUE Release 02)

4 min read

Summary

nasa / odni-sourced first-hand testimony anchors this NBC News feature (Laura Strickler, Colleen Long, Justin Goldman, Mosheh Gains; May 22 2026) on PURSUE Release 02, which foregrounds human witness accounts rather than the file-inventory or skeptic angles covered elsewhere (src-dow-pursue-release-02-2026-05, src-newsweek-pursue-release-02-2026-05, src-pentagon-second-batch-ufo-release-2026-05). It leads with a late-2025 ODNI memo from a senior U.S. intelligence officer whose helicopter, investigating “thuds” near a mountain range, met an orange orb that split in two, rose from the ground to within ~10 ft, dropped below, and sped away — then “chased” called-in fighter jets, matching their speed and flight path (“We were virtually speechless”). It threads in a 1970 Los Alamos scientist’s handwritten letter on green lights seen 1948–1951, a 1972 CIA officer’s concentric-green-circles sighting in the USSR, the 2023 Lake Huron shootdown, and NASA audio including Scott Carpenter’s 1962 Project Mercury “snowflakes” and the Apollo 12 (1969) crew. NBC stresses the government again drew no conclusions and attached its standard non-determination disclaimer.

Key Claims

  • A senior U.S. intelligence officer’s ODNI memo (late 2025) describes a helicopter “thuds” investigation near a mountain range: an orange orb split in two, changed direction, rose from the ground to within ~10 ft of the helicopter, dropped below, and sped away (per the officer’s memo).
  • Fighter jets were called in; the orbs matched the jets’ speed and flight path and appeared to “chase” them; the officer filed a debrief that night (officer’s notes).
  • The documents are a second batch of declassified UAP files released Friday by the Trump administration; mostly Defense Department material plus seven NASA files and one CIA file, spanning the 1940s through six months ago, redacted to protect witnesses/locations/sensitive info (NBC).
  • 1970 handwritten letter: a Los Alamos scientist reports regularly seeing green lights 9–11 p.m. in the mountains during 1948–1951, once “moving in some kind of formation” (per the letter).
  • 1972: a CIA officer in the USSR, after watching a Canada–USSR sports competition, saw a green circle widen into concentric circles (per the file).
  • Released videos show spherical, oblong and cigar-shaped objects over land, lake and sea — including a Nov 2020 circular object over the central U.S., objects over Kabul, Syria and Kazakhstan (a burst of oval white light near Karaganda International Airport), an object near a surfaced submarine, and a fast-moving object downed over Lake Huron in 2023 (recovery status unclear from the footage).
  • NASA audio: Scott Carpenter, during three Earth revolutions in Project Mercury (1962), describes randomly moving particles “exactly like snowflakes”; the Apollo 12 crew (1969) also describe odd things seen aboard.
  • The government drew no conclusions on the UAPs’ origins and attached a disclaimer that nothing should be read “as reflecting an analytical judgment, investigative conclusion, or factual determination” (NBC / disclaimer text).

Notable Quotes

“The ground team suddenly radioed that the object had risen from the ground, approached within ten feet of the helicopter, dropped below us and sped away.” — senior U.S. intelligence officer, ODNI memo

“We were virtually speechless after these observations.” — senior U.S. intelligence officer

“Their motion is random. They look exactly like snowflakes to me.” — Scott Carpenter, Project Mercury (1962)

Cross-source notes

NBC’s helicopter/orange-orb account is the same late-2025 senior-intelligence-officer encounter detailed in src-fox-helicopter-near-miss-orbs-2026-05 (Fox: ~10 ft, ~20-mi pursuit) and the orbs “chasing the fighters” Form 302 in src-newsweek-pursue-release-02-2026-05. NBC attributes it to an ODNI memo, whereas Fox framed it as an FBI Form 302 — same encounter, conflicting document-of-origin labels, location withheld in all. NBC dates the CIA Soviet sighting to 1972, while other Release 02 sources cite a 1973 CIA report on sary-shagan with concentric green circles — likely related Soviet-green-circle material, possibly distinct records.

Graph View

Backlinks