FBIUnknown

Albert K. Bender 'silenced' by three men — Bridgeport, Connecticut, 1952

~1952Bridgeport, Connecticut

⟳ Deeper read pending. This record is from the FBI 62-HQ-83894 flying-disc file, whose cursive, clippings and faint scans are under-read by automated OCR. It is flagged for a vision-transcription pass and likely undercounts what the source contains — see the documents collection note.

Analysis — our summary

Section 9 contains an FBI investigation of Oklahoma City citizen James Maney, age 13, who contacted the Bureau in November 1958 asking whether FBI agents had discouraged UFO researcher A. Bender of Bridgeport, Connecticut from continuing his investigations. An FBI agent contacted Maney on December 8, 1958 and clarified the Bureau's policy of not conducting UFO investigations. Maney had read in Gray Barker's 'The Saucerian Bulletin' (Vol. 3 No. 4, October 15, 1958) an unsigned letter alleging that three men from the FBI, Air Force Intelligence, and CIA had silenced both Bender and researcher George Adamski using CIA threats. The FBI denied participation in any such activity.

As reported — verbatim from the document

“"three men tried to silence George Adamski... the 3 men were from the FBI, Air Force Intelligence, and the Central Intelligence Agency. It was the man from the CIA who made the threats that were designed to shut Adamski up"”

Analyst notes — caveats & confidence

Extremely multi-step hearsay: unsigned letter in a civilian UFO bulletin, to a 13-year-old, to the FBI. The FBI formally denied the allegations. Gray Barker's 'They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers' (referenced in this file) is the source of the 'three men in black' mythology. No corroborating evidence presented. OCR quality is good for this section.

Provenance

Source document65_HS1-834228961_62-HQ-83894_Section_9.pdf

Document typecorrespondence collection

Reporting agencyFBI

Source pages290

DeclassifiedFirst public at this release (2026)

Held classified~74 years (≥, to this release)

Extraction confidence Very lowHow cleanly this record could be parsed from the source — driven by legibility & redaction. It is not a measure of how credible or anomalous the sighting is.