Key Takeaways
- Two documents dated 12 November 1963 sit behind the JFK UFO story: NSAM 271, which is genuine, and a 'Top Secret' UFO memo to the CIA, which has never been authenticated
- The UFO memo asks the CIA Director for a classification review of all UFO intelligence files, with an interim report due by 1 February 1964
- The JFK Library, which keeps copies of all presidential correspondence, has no record of the UFO memo
- NSAM 271 is real: Kennedy told NASA Administrator James Webb to pursue joint US-Soviet space cooperation, following his September 1963 UN offer of a joint Moon mission
- No authenticated document connects Kennedy's assassination to UFOs
📑 Table of Contents
- What Is the JFK UFO Memo?
- What the JFK UFO Memo Actually Says
- Is the JFK UFO Memo Real? What the Evidence Says
- NSAM 271: The Genuine Kennedy Memo From the Same Day
- JFK Assassination UFO Theory: Where the Rumour Comes From
- JFK and UFOs: What We Can Verify, and What We Can't
- How to Verify a Declassified UFO Document Yourself
On 12 November 1963, ten days before he was shot in Dallas, President Kennedy signed National Security Action Memorandum No. 271, telling NASA to pursue joint space exploration with the Soviet Union. That document is real, and you can read it in the US National Archives. The internet, however, mostly knows a different document with the same date: the so-called JFK UFO memo, a "Top Secret" page in which Kennedy supposedly ordered the CIA to hand over its UFO files. Our archive holds scans of both, so this week we put them side by side and sort out which is which.
This is the fourth post in our Document of the Week series: each week we take one file from our declassified UAP document archive and set out, in plain English, what it actually says. This one is different from the last three, because this time the question is whether the document should be believed at all.
What Is the JFK UFO Memo?
The JFK UFO memo is an alleged Top Secret memorandum dated 12 November 1963, addressed from the President to the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Its subject line reads: "Classification review of all UFO intelligence files affecting National Security."
If genuine, it would be extraordinary: a sitting president, days before his death, ordering the CIA to sort through its UFO intelligence. That "if" is doing a lot of work, though, and the document's history explains why.
The memo has no traceable archival origin. It first circulated among UFO researchers in 1999, arriving from anonymous sources alongside a batch of other unprovenanced papers. It reached the mainstream in April 2011, when author William Lester said the CIA had released it to him under the Freedom of Information Act while he researched a book on Kennedy. News outlets from Space.com to NBC covered the claim. What none of them could do was find the memo anywhere else.
What the JFK UFO Memo Actually Says
The memo is three short paragraphs. The writer says he has instructed James Webb, the NASA Administrator, to develop a programme of joint space and lunar exploration with the Soviet Union. He then asks the CIA Director to have the "high threat cases" reviewed, to separate genuine unknowns from sightings explained by classified CIA and USAF projects. The stated reason is diplomatic: it is important, the memo says, to "make a clear distinction between the knowns and unknowns" in case the Soviets mistook the new cooperation for intelligence gathering against their own defence and space programmes.
The second paragraph asks for a data-sharing arrangement with NASA covering cases "where Unknowns are a factor", and the last line requests an interim report on the review no later than 1 February 1964. The signature block is typed: "/s/ John F. Kennedy". There is no ink signature from Kennedy anywhere on the page.
A few physical details are worth noting. The copy in circulation carries the handwritten word "draft" in the top corner, several handwritten scrawls near the signature block, and three large black redaction bars, including one covering most of the lower third of the page. Nobody has ever explained who made the redactions, or when.
Is the JFK UFO Memo Real? What the Evidence Says
Nobody has been able to prove it, and the checks that should be easy all come back empty.
The strongest problem is the JFK Library in Boston, which holds copies of all of Kennedy's presidential correspondence. When reporters asked in 2011, a research technician at the library could not find a carbon copy of the memo in the archive. A genuine presidential memorandum to the CIA Director should exist at both ends: the original with the CIA, the carbon at the White House. This one exists at neither.
Lester's FOIA claim has never been corroborated either. The CIA has not confirmed releasing the document, no FOIA case number for it has been published, and as sceptics pointed out at the time, the memo has not turned up anywhere except through Lester. Researchers who had seen the 1999 batch recognised it immediately: the same scan had been circulating for over a decade before the FOIA story attached itself.
None of this makes the memo a proven forgery. Documents do go missing from archives, and real files have surfaced through odd routes before. But compare it with the files we have covered in this series, like the Sandia Base sightings log: genuine paperwork comes with file numbers, named officers, distribution lists, declassification stamps and an archive you can write to. The JFK UFO memo has a date, a typed signature and a story. That is not enough.
NSAM 271: The Genuine Kennedy Memo From the Same Day
NSAM 271 is everything the UFO memo is not: a real, catalogued White House document whose history can be checked. Dated 12 November 1963 and addressed to the NASA Administrator, its subject is "Cooperation with the USSR on Outer Space Matters". Kennedy tells Webb to "assume personally the initiative and central responsibility" for developing a programme of substantive cooperation with the Soviet Union in outer space, including cooperation in lunar landing programmes, and to report back by 15 December 1963.
It did not come out of nowhere. On 20 September 1963, Kennedy had stood before the UN General Assembly and openly proposed a joint expedition to the Moon. NSAM 271 was the paperwork that followed, turning a speech into an instruction. The document sits in the US National Archives with the rest of the NSAM series, and nobody disputes it.
Here is why it matters to the UFO story: the questionable memo leans on the genuine one. Its first paragraph mentions instructing James Webb on joint space and lunar exploration, which is exactly what NSAM 271 did on exactly that date. Whoever wrote the UFO memo, whether Kennedy or a forger, knew the real history well. A forgery built around a true fact is much harder to dismiss at a glance, which is why provenance, not plausibility, is the test that counts.
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JFK Assassination UFO Theory: Where the Rumour Comes From
The rumour that Kennedy was killed over UFO secrets rests on one more document from the same anonymous 1990s batch: the so-called burned memo. It is a partly scorched page, supposedly rescued from a fire by a CIA employee, that appears to show a senior agency officer discussing the president's inquiries as a problem to be handled. It is unsigned and undated in any verifiable way, and like the UFO memo it has no archival history at all.
Put the three pieces together and you can see how the story assembles itself. The UFO memo supplies the request: Kennedy demanding UFO files. The date supplies the drama: ten days before Dallas. The burned memo supplies the motive. It is a tidy narrative, and tidiness is the problem. Genuine intelligence files, as anyone who has read the CIA's real declassified UFO reporting will know, are untidy: full of hedged language, routing stamps, half-relevant detail and loose ends. Documents that tell a perfect story in three pages deserve more suspicion, not less.
For the record: the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the Warren Commission and the millions of pages in the JFK assassination records releases contain no authenticated document connecting Kennedy's death to UFOs.
JFK and UFOs: What We Can Verify, and What We Can't
Verified: NSAM 271 exists, and on 12 November 1963 Kennedy really did order NASA to pursue joint space exploration with the Soviet Union. His 20 September 1963 UN speech proposing a joint Moon mission is on film. Kennedy also had a documented habit of asking agencies for sensitive files, and the CIA genuinely was studying UFO reports in that era, as its own declassified papers show.
Unverified: the UFO memo itself, the claim that the CIA released it under FOIA, and everything about the burned memo. After 27 years in circulation, not one of those has acquired a file number, a carbon copy or an archivist willing to vouch for it.
False, or at least unsupported by anything checkable: the claim that Kennedy's assassination was connected to UFO files, and the versions of this story that present the UFO memo as an officially released government document. It has never appeared in any official release, including the recent PURSUE batches, which we have been through in detail file by file.
Our own verdict, for what it is worth: the balance of evidence points to a well-made fake built on a real day in history. We keep the scans in our archive because the story is part of UFO history either way, and because putting the questionable document next to the genuine one is the best training you can get in reading this material.
How to Verify a Declassified UFO Document Yourself
Start with provenance: which archive holds the original, and under what reference? Genuine files carry catalogue numbers you can quote, like DEFE 24 at the UK National Archives or the DOW and CIA reference numbers in the PURSUE releases. Then look for the boring machinery of real paperwork: distribution lists, routing stamps, declassification markings with review dates, page numbers in a numbered file. Ask whether copies exist at both ends of the correspondence, because government mail always makes at least two. And treat any document that only exists as a floating scan, however dramatic, as unproven until an archive says otherwise.
The good news is that there has never been more genuine material to practise on. Our UAP document archive hub indexes every collection we hold, from the UK Ministry of Defence files to Brazil's Operação Prato, all of it with real reference numbers. Next week: another file, in plain English.
Sources:
- National Security Action Memorandum No. 271, "Cooperation with the USSR on Outer Space Matters", 12 November 1963 — US National Archives / JFK Library; scan held in the WatchTheStars document archive (UK MOD collection folder)
- Alleged memorandum "Classification review of all UFO intelligence files affecting National Security", dated 12 November 1963 — unauthenticated circulated copy, WatchTheStars document archive
- CIA Cover-up Alleged in JFK's 'Secret UFO Inquiry' — Space.com, April 2011
- Is that JFK memo to the CIA about UFOs real? — NBC News, April 2011
- CIA Cover-up Alleged in JFK's 'Secret UFO Inquiry' — Live Science, April 2011
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