A newly released batch of once-classified UFO files has revived interest in one of the strangest claims buried in Cold War-era intelligence records: a CIA-linked reference to a destroyed "message from space" and its transmitter. The fresh documents were released on Friday (Jun 12) as part of the Trump administration's third tranche of declassified files related to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAPs), the government's official term for UFOs. The latest release includes photographs, videos, drawings and intelligence records from military and civilian agencies, adding to a growing public archive that has drawn intense interest in recent months.
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CIA destroyed messages from aliens?
Among the newly scrutinised records is a confidential CIA memorandum dated January 9, 1958. The document recounts a telephone conversation with Dr Leon Davidson, a chemical engineer who worked on the Manhattan Project and later at Los Alamos before becoming an independent researcher of UFO reports.
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CIA communication about Dr Leon Davidson and 'destroyed' records from latest UFO file dump Photograph: (US Department of War UFO file dump part 3)
In the memo, CIA official R.P.B. Lohmann wrote that Davidson had been informed the agency could not help resolve his concerns regarding a "space message and its transmitter" because records connected to the matter had already been destroyed.
"We have contacted Dr Davidson by telephone advising him that we cannot resolve his problem concerning the space message and its transmitter because records on the matter have been destroyed by the evaluating agency," the memo states.
The document offers no further explanation about the nature of the alleged message, who discovered it, or which agency had evaluated and destroyed the records.
What makes the memo particularly intriguing is its tone. Lohmann acknowledged that the response given to Davidson was "extraordinarily noncommittal and evasive" and suggested it was crafted to avoid contradicting previous statements made by government agencies.
The memo also notes that CIA officials attempted to conceal their identities during conversations with Davidson, although Lohmann conceded that the scientist likely knew who he was dealing with.
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Alien starbase on moon?
Davidson was not a fringe figure. Archival records maintained by Columbia University show he spent years collecting and studying UFO reports, eventually assembling what is now known as the Leon Davidson Flying Saucer Collection.
The latest release also includes records linked to NASA's Apollo-era missions, including references to an alleged "alien starbase" on the far side of the Moon that reportedly did not appear in official mission transcripts.
The Pentagon says public interest in the archive has been unprecedented, with the website hosting the files receiving more than 1.7 billion visits since its launch in May. For UFO researchers, the newly released memo is likely to become one of the most closely examined documents in the collection.

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