FBI September 2023 Sighting - Serial 4

Investigation reading

This released file is a two-page, heavily redacted FBI FD-302 interview packet. It is documentary witness testimony, not an imagery or sensor packet. The PDF contains scanned page images: the ordinary text layer is effectively empty, while the preserved OCR and rendered page images carry the readable account. The Open Sky release-file copy is 275,673 bytes and matches SHA-256 4f462fefe8f38e6445f652067ff0ba418e6b0d4f38ce73b5c8190e857fe352ed.

Rendered-page review matters here because several high-signal fields are easy to misread. Page 1 visually reads At 7:02 am for the contractors' base brief, not 7:00 am. Page 2 visually reads that the object's width was about one and a half Blackhawks, while one OCR pass can surface a different width. The public reading below follows the rendered pages where they are legible and keeps unresolved wording as review leads rather than turning it into a conclusion.

Evidence media

• Official PDF: Open Sky release-file copy

Page 1 is a derived render from the official two-page FD-302 PDF. It shows the heavily redacted opening interview page, including the 7:02 am base-brief line and the gate/fob sequence before the witness looked up.

Page 2 is a derived render from the same official PDF. It contains the source-visible sighting narrative; the released file includes no separate object photo, video frame, map, radar plot, or sensor exhibit.

What the file appears to contain

Page 1 is the opening FD-302 page. The FBI interview was entered in October 2023 and concerns a redacted September 2023 in-person interview in the United States. Names, facility details, contact information, file numbers, and most site identifiers are redacted. The witness is described as having worked at a redacted location for a redacted number of years.

The visible narrative says that on a redacted September 2023 date, the witness was with contractors on a special project. She had restricted airspace in a redacted area for upcoming tests. At about 7:02 a.m., the contractors received the base's standard redacted brief, entered three vehicles, and began driving toward the test site. Between 7:15 and 7:30 a.m., the lead vehicle reached a gate restricting access to a redacted area. A remote fob attempt opened the gate only slightly and then closed it on three tries; on the fourth attempt it opened fully and stayed open. The page states there had been no prior gate problems and no operating issues after the redacted September date. Page 1 ends as the witness was driving through the gate and looked up.

Page 2 continues the sighting description. The object is described as cigar-shaped, southwest of the witnesses, roughly 500 to 3,000 feet above the nearest tree line; an agent note places that tree line about one mile southwest of a redacted position. The object was already present when the witness looked up, was almost hovering, and was slowly moving from east to west.

The light is described as an intense diamond-white light, apparently ringed, on the eastern end of the object and pointing southeast. The witness compared looking at the light to looking into the sun. The body is quoted as metallic bronze in color, with a length of two or three Blackhawk helicopters lined up nose to tail. The width is visually legible as about one and a half Blackhawks, though the page notes width was hard to judge because the light may have obscured part of the body. The object is described as completely silent.

The visible account says the witness first reacted with annoyance because the ranges had been restricted for the morning's tests, then concluded the object was not an aircraft or drone. She inched the vehicle forward while she and another redacted person watched. The viewing interval is stated as five to ten seconds, after which the object just disappeared. The sky was described as clear with no clouds. The rendered page appears to say the object did leave any contrails; because that wording is grammatically odd and lacks a visible not, it should be checked against any higher-quality official copy rather than silently corrected.

The page says the witness did not notice interference with her vehicle's engine while the object was visible. It also says she only observed one object and felt it left when it saw them; that last clause is preserved as witness impression, not as an objective finding. A passenger in the second vehicle reportedly said he saw the object too. The witness reportedly would not have reported it if she had been alone, and co-workers later made fun of her because of the report. The page states plainly that no photos or video were taken by the witness or contractors. It also says the witness had seen most aircraft and drones used by the U.S. military during fifteen years at a redacted location and had never seen anything like the object she observed.

Source custody and provenance

The official media URL recorded for this Release 01 item is https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/serial-3_redacted.pdf. At review time, that WAR.GOV media endpoint rejected direct automated access, so this draft relies on the verified Release 01 release-file copy and matching SHA-256 hash.

The selected release inventory row is 156, with FBI as the agency and FBI September 2023 Sighting - Serial 4 as the title. The graph also surfaces a second release-record row, 159, with the same title and canonical PDF URL. That duplicate-row relationship should be treated as a release-catalog cleanup lead, not as a separate corroborating source.

There is also a description mismatch to preserve. The release/graph manifest description says the U.S. person described the object as metallic/gray in color, while the visible FD-302 continuation page reads metallic bronze in color. The page text should control the draft description, but the manifest discrepancy needs source-catalog reconciliation before anyone treats the color wording as settled across all records.

Graph context

Open Sky's graph currently models this item as a WAR.GOV/PURSUE Release 01 PDF asset plus official release-record nodes. The semantic extraction attached to this asset reports 62 extracted claims, 40 entity mentions, 2 sensor-event records, and 0 table rows. Those counts are navigation aids for review; they are not findings.

The two sensor-event records appear to be triggered by source text about aircraft and drones in the witness comparison. They do not represent released radar, EO/IR, telemetry, track data, photos, video, or an independent sensor return. Related graph records include the same PDF asset/release records and a USPER Statement about UAP Sighting document; those are leads for neighboring-source comparison only.

Leads to check

• Reconcile the release manifest's metallic/gray wording with the rendered FD-302 page's metallic bronze in color wording.
• Confirm whether rows 156 and 159 are duplicate manifest records, revised catalog rows, or two references to the same PDF asset.
• Seek any less-redacted date, site, range, gate, convoy, project, or test-schedule records that could anchor the 7:15-7:30 a.m. sighting window.
• Check whether the gate/fob behavior has maintenance logs, access-control logs, radio-frequency interference notes, or mundane equipment explanations.
• Compare this FD-302 with adjacent September 2023 serials and the related USPER statement before merging witness accounts or color/shape details.
• Perform prosaic checks only if the exact date, location, sightline, and airspace/test context become available; the present redactions block meaningful astronomy, aircraft, drone, launch, or weather correlation.
• Re-check the odd contrail sentence against any higher-resolution or current official copy, because the visible wording appears to omit not.

Lead check notes

• Checked — media scope: the released file is a two-page FD-302 PDF with two scanned page images and no embedded attachments; the public page now links the official release-file copy and shows both derived page renders. The source itself says no photos or video of the object were taken by the witness or contractors.
• Checked — rendered-page wording: page-render review supports 7:02 am for the base brief, one and a half Blackhawks for the width estimate, and the visible contrail sentence as did leave any contrails; the last phrase remains a source-copy/OCR review issue because the wording is grammatically odd.
• Partial — color and catalog provenance: the visible FD-302 continuation page says metallic bronze in color, while the release description says metallic/gray in color; rows 156 and 159 also surface for the same title/canonical PDF URL. These are catalog/source-layer reconciliation leads, not independent corroboration.
• Partial — related witness/source context: the page reports that a passenger in the second vehicle also saw the object and graph context surfaces a related USPER Statement about UAP Sighting, but the current page does not compare that neighboring source line by line. Do not merge witness accounts, color, or shape details without direct source comparison.
• Blocked — prosaic and site checks: exact date, location, sightline, range, project, airspace, gate logs, and maintenance/access-control records remain redacted or absent here. Astronomy, aircraft, drone, launch, weather, and gate/fob explanations need those external source records before they can be checked responsibly.

Deep investigation — graph + web reconnaissance

Source reread

The source reread keeps this item in the witness-testimony lane. The release-file PDF verifies as a two-page FBI FD-302 packet, 275,673 bytes, SHA-256 4f462fefe8f38e6445f652067ff0ba418e6b0d4f38ce73b5c8190e857fe352ed, with two scanned page images and no separate attachments. Page-render review supports the 7:02 am base-brief time and the gate/fob sequence between 7:15 and 7:30 am: three partial remote openings followed by a fourth full opening, with the page saying there were no prior or later operating issues for that gate.

Page 2 remains the source of record for the sighting description. It supports metallic bronze in color, a length of two or three Blackhawk helicopters, and a visually reviewed width of about one and a half Blackhawks; the older OCR/graph phrase two and a half Blackhawks should be treated as an extraction-quality issue. The visible contrail sentence still appears to read the object did leave any contrails, which is grammatically odd and should not be silently corrected without a cleaner official copy. The same page says no photos or video were taken by the witness or contractors, so there is no released image, video, radar plot, map, or measurement exhibit for this file.

Graph connections

The graph has an exact WAR.GOV/PURSUE asset match for the serial-3 PDF URL and SHA-256 above, plus release-record relationships for row 156 and a non-current same-title/same-URL row 159. Row 156 is the current release-row anchor, but the graph also preserves revision drift around a neighboring USPER Statement file; use the exact URL/hash/title when reconciling this page rather than treating every row relationship as a separate source. The asset currently has 62 machine-extracted claims, 40 entity mentions, and 2 machine SensorEvent records. Those sensor events are text-triggered from witness comparison language about aircraft and drones; they are not radar, EO/IR, telemetry, track data, or independent sensor evidence.

A secondary UFO-USA/GitHub markdown conversion exists for the same official URL at commit 49f78498f323bcba625fd96b7283cbe5779349d6 and includes page-level text for page-0001.md and page-0002.md. It is useful as a derivative transcription lead only. The official WAR.GOV/Open Sky release-file copy remains the custody source for public claims.

External provenance and web context

Direct official WAR.GOV probes for the PDF, the UFO release landing page, and the current CSV endpoint returned 403 Access Denied during this check, matching the access pattern already noted for several Release 01 files. That is an access/custody condition, not evidence against the document, because the release-file copy verifies by size and hash.

Internet Archive availability reports an exact-URL snapshot for https://www.war.gov/medialink/ufo/release_1/serial-3_redacted.pdf at 20260515090054. A ranged archive fetch returned application/pdf and %PDF-1.7 bytes, but the archived copy is 468,817 bytes with SHA-256 abe02815d6331854374cee46db6b1f948f83d9115d2121ac86f5836fef1b65a0, larger than the Open Sky release-file copy. Treat this as a possible official-server reprocessed-PDF/versioning lead until a full page-by-page comparison is promoted; do not merge the two byte identities without noting the mismatch. Targeted FBI Vault searches for the exact title and filename returned zero matching Vault items, so no independent FBI Vault copy surfaced in this pass.

Prosaic checks and follow-up leads

The visible source gives a morning time window, a redacted U.S. test-site setting, a reported restricted-airspace/test context, a gate/fob anomaly, clear-sky testimony, a short five-to-ten-second viewing interval, and at least one additional passenger witness. Those are useful investigation anchors, but the exact date, location, sightline, facility, aircraft/drone test schedule, and gate/access-control logs remain redacted or absent. The release row's broad 9/1/23 / United States metadata is not enough to run a responsible astronomy, aircraft, drone, launch, satellite, or weather correlation; broad negative graph probes on that date should not be treated as an exclusion.

Highest-value next checks are: obtain a cleaner official copy to resolve the contrail and width text; reconcile the metallic/gray manifest description with the visible metallic bronze FD-302 text; compare Serial 4 line-by-line with the related USPER Statement and adjacent September 2023 serials before merging witness details; and seek site records for the gate/fob, range restrictions, scheduled tests, and vehicle convoy timing.

Audit note

This section adds graph/web context only. It does not create a finding, hypothesis, or resolution decision. Machine-extracted claims and sensor records remain machine_extracted_needs_human_review unless they are verified directly against source text or page renders.

Limits

This packet is a redacted interview record. It contains no object photograph, no video, no map, no instrument plot, no technical exhibit, and no independent measurement table. Most names, positions, exact dates, locations, facility identifiers, and project details are redacted. The FBI boilerplate on page 1 says the FD-302 contains neither recommendations nor conclusions of the FBI. This Open Sky page is therefore an investigation draft for source review, not a resolution, finding, or hypothesis.

Sources

• Official media URL: serial-3_redacted.pdf
• Open Sky release-file copy: war-gov-fbi-september-2023-sighting-serial-4-e93f6997
• SHA-256: 4f462fefe8f38e6445f652067ff0ba418e6b0d4f38ce73b5c8190e857fe352ed
• Release 01 manifest row reviewed: 156; related same-URL release-record row surfaced in graph: 159
• Source type reviewed: two-page FBI FD-302 PDF with complete OCR coverage and rendered-page spot checks