That ‘Unidentified Humanoid’ Memo Isn’t in the Official UFO Files

Post: @PaulGoldEagle on X, 13 May 2026, 20:44 UTC (4:44 p.m. ET). It’s a text post with an image of the memo, not a video. Embedded from X, not copied.

A typewriter belonging to Moldovan writer George Meniuc. A generic image, unrelated to the fake memo. Credit: Gikü, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The claim

On 8 May 2026 the Pentagon put the first batch of its UFO files online at war.gov/UFO, a new portal it calls PURSUE. NPR reported that “the Pentagon released more than 160 records”, and the department said more would follow “on a rolling basis”. Five days later, on 13 May, the @PaulGoldEagle account on X posted what it presented as one of those files. It was a typed memo on “Department of War” letterhead, dated 14 January 1994, about an encounter with an “unidentified humanoid”. The post read: “Just so much, if all this is true, it’s more than we could have dreamed of…Here we go:”

Lead Stories checked it on 14 May and rated it false.

Timeline

• 1947: the War Department is folded into the new National Military Establishment, which was renamed the Department of Defense in 1949.
• 14 Jan 1994: the date typed on the viral memo.
• 27 Jan 1994: the only 1994 incident Lead Stories found in the release, a pilots’ sighting of an unidentified object over Kazakhstan.
• Sept 2025: a presidential executive order restores “Department of War” as a secondary title for the Department of Defense.
• 8 May 2026: Release 01 goes live at war.gov/UFO (NPR; TechCrunch).
• 13 May 2026, 20:44 UTC: @PaulGoldEagle posts the memo image.
• 14 May 2026: Lead Stories publishes its fact check.
• 4 Nov 2026: we rechecked. No new release has added a document matching the memo, and the account hasn’t produced a source for it.

What believers claim

The appeal is timing and plausibility. The Pentagon had just released real UFO files, and Hegseth said they had been “hidden behind classifications” and “fueled justified speculation”. A memo that looked like part of that release, with official-looking formatting and a dramatic subject, was easy to accept. The post itself hedged (“if all this is true”), but reposts treated it as a released government file.

What the research found

It isn’t in the release. Lead Stories searched the official UFO site for any 1994 incident and “found no sign of the one described in the fake Jan. 14, 1994 report”. The only 1994 item was the 27 January Kazakhstan sighting by pilots, which has nothing to do with a humanoid.