by UFO History Buff & Author, Charles Lear
Recently, there have been reports throughout the media that FBI files concerning a UFO sighting reported by three Anoka, Minnesota, police officers have been declassified and are available at the National Archives. Remarkably, almost none of the media outlets covering the story provide a link to the actual document with the exception one news outlet, KARE 11, which was kind enough to provide a pdf with one of the FBI documents and related material from Americans for Safe Aerospace and the National UFO Reporting Center.
There is an article by Conor Wight on the CBS News site (updated May 28, 2026) headlined “Newly declassified FBI documents detail UFO sighting by Anoka officers — and one of them filmed it.” Wight is with CBS Minnesota and starts his story with this: “Buried within the National Archives is an unexplained sighting from right here in Minnesota.”
Buried is an apt description, as the documents were quite hard to find in the National Archives Catalogue, but a search within “Group 16: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection,” brought us to records from the FBI, which led us to the files related to the Anoka case, which are the top three in a series of six results.
The top file from FBI Cincinnati is dated March 10, 2025, and is identified after the redacted Case ID # as “Observation of UAP by Anoka Police Department personnel.” According to the section headed “Details,” on February 19, 2025, at 1:15 a.m., three officers observed a “UAP” for 90 minutes. It seemed to be at an altitude of 10,ooo-30,000 feet and at one point, possibly 50 miles away.
It exhibited a light display described as “rapidly changing ‘tie-dye’ multi-color lighting which was inconsistent with known aircraft lights.” It was additionally described as having had the appearance of an illustration of an atom with six “hula-hoops with lights around each loop.” It was said to have been able to move extremely fast seeming to travel 30-40 miles in seconds “with a movement that ‘skipped across the sky like a stone”’ and to have possibly have flown close to the Monticello Nuclear Power Plant.
One of the officers put his phone up to the binoculars he was using to observe the object and captured some video footage of it. This resulted in the video being blurred.
After the details, it is explained that FBI Cincinnati got the report “from a liaison partner organization, Americans for Safe Aerospace.” The ASA report with the initial interview with “the witness” is said to be attached. The ASA report is also said to contain a description of another sighting by the witness on February 17, 2025.
The second document down is from FBI Minnesota dated May, 9, 2025. It contains the details of an interview of whom we’ll call “the witness,” in his office at the Anoka Police Department by an FBI agent.
According to the document, the witness said that he and the other officers were in the local Domino’s Pizza parking lot for “an after-action briefing” after training. He described the object as a multi-colored gyroscope that was about the size of an SUV or a school bus. He said it was southwest of his position towards Minnetonka, Minnesota, and that when a private airplane flying from the southeast got close to the object, the object descended, moved around the path of the airplane, ascended, and hovered. He said it then moved in three separate bursts, hovered west of him towards Monticello, and then descended, in the words of the reporting agent, “like a leaf floating on a breeze.”
The witness said that when he was leaving the parking lot to meet someone (redacted) at the local Kwik Trip he saw, in the agent’s words, “a second object, similar to the first,” followed it for 12 miles down Highway 10, watched it as it hovered over Monticello, and then continued to the Kwik Trip.
The witness also provided information on two other sightings he’d had, one (recorded on his phone) on September 11, 2022, of a hovering object near the Anoka Ice Arena that then rapidly ascended, and another when he was younger (age redacted) of, in the agent’s words, “a large yellow and orange orb hovering over the lake at his parents’ cabin.” In addition to his own sightings, the witness said that a friend had seen three flashes of light while driving, recorded the third flash, and gave him the video.
The document concludes stating that the case is closed unless additional information is received that might give reason for the case to be reopened
The third file down is the last one pertaining to the case and is the same as what was linked to by KARE 11 except that there is a copy of the video taken by the witness. The FBI document, identified as “F–71A – Guardian Complaint Form,” is dated May 15, 2025. The first page is a duplicate of the March 10th form, while the second lists the attachments from NUFORC, ASA, and the video.
The first NUFORC attachment is a report dated January 16, 2025, of a white light seen that same day by three witnesses driving down Highway 10, and the second is dated February 20, 2025, and has details of a January 17, 2025, sighting from a deck in Saint Paul, Minnesota, of a diamond-shaped, muti-colored object that traveled at an “unexplainable speed and direction then disappeared” and caused animals to react.
The ASA report begins with a statement that might explain the involvement of the FBI: “Below is a report which might involve nuclear energy infrastructure.” The report has details that are missing in the FBI documents, not least of which is that it states there were a total of four witnesses including the reporting witness.
According to the Witness Statement, after the initial sighting with two co-workers, the witness went to his office to get a pair of Bushnell binoculars and took up a new position on a parking ramp and continued observing the object with three co-workers. The witness says a helicopter flew between them and the object and that this seemed to prompt the object to move off rapidly to the north and gain altitude. The witness also says that a co-worker drove 10 miles down highway 10 and reported that the object was still far off to the west of him. The airplane and the object’s apparent reaction to it are described as in the other reports.
The witness describes seeing the second object, says it was similar to and much closer than the first object, and that he wasn’t able to stay and “monitor it.” There is no mention of him following it down highway 10. Finally, he says he saw a similar object on February 17, 2025, and that he did not discuss it with anyone until seeing the object with his co-workers on February 19th.
For insight into the background of the relationship between ASA and the FBI, there is the article by Daniel Lippman headlined, “FBI agents who investigate UFOs worried they could be pushed out in possible purge,” posted February 3, 2025, on Politico. The subhead reads: “The existence of the FBI’s informal working group on the issue has not been disclosed publicly before.”
Founder and ASA Executive Director Ryan Graves, a former Navy pilot, is quoted expressing concern that “the FBI’s UAP Working Group could be affected by transition changes.” Lippman describes the group as “informal,” and says that Graves and three others were familiar with it and that they described it this way: “It consists of a national program manager and more than a dozen employees across the country who spend much of their time tracking down UAPs.” According to Lippman, Graves said that ASA had been working with the group for over a year.
Lippman includes a statement from the FBI to the effect that it “investigates Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena when there is potential for a violation of federal law.”