CIA-UAP-013 is a Central Intelligence Agency information report released in PURSUE Release 03 on June 12, 2026. The document carries Report No. 00-B-93674 and describes flying object sightings reported through a Budapest-based sub-source, with an attached sketch showing the objects' suspected formation and flight path between Budapest and Moscow. The incident date listed in the official metadata is 1956, though the underlying correspondence referenced in the report is dated to 1955.12
Provenance and Chain of Custody
CIA-UAP-013 carries Report No. 00-B-93674 and is designated a supplement to Report 00/C. The document is marked UNCLASSIFIED//NOFORN with dissemination controls invoking Title 18 U.S.C. Sections 793 and 794 regarding unauthorized disclosure of information affecting national defense. At time of preparation, distribution was strictly limited: within the government, only full-time employees of the CIA, Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and FBI were authorized recipients, along with Intelligence components within the State and Defense departments. Dissemination abroad was prohibited except on direct authorization from the CIA Director; consultants and contract personnel were excluded unless they were normally full-time employees of the named agencies.
A photostatic copy of the original letter, complete with signatures and an English translation, was held on loan from the CIA Library at the time the report was prepared. This physical custody arrangement indicates the document passed through CIA Library holdings before eventually being processed for release. The PURSUE release description notes that a more redacted version of CIA-UAP-013 has been publicly available on the CIA's website, meaning the PURSUE release provides a less-redacted edition of a previously known document.
The report was approved for release in 2026 as part of the Department of War's PURSUE initiative and was made available on June 12, 2026.3
Source and Collection Method
The originating source identified in the report is a naturalized U.S. citizen of Hungarian extraction residing in Boulder, Colorado at the time of reporting. This individual received a personal letter from a niece living in West Hungary. The niece's letter, provided in free English translation, contained an account of unusual aerial phenomena that had reportedly disturbed the local population for several weeks. The source subsequently passed this correspondence to the CIA.
This is single-source, secondhand, human intelligence: the CIA's source was relaying a letter rather than providing a direct personal observation. The niece herself was not debriefed; the CIA's information derives entirely from what she chose to put in correspondence across the Iron Curtain.
Document Content
The Niece's Account
The translated excerpt quoted in the report describes what the niece referred to colloquially as the "flying circus" -- a phrase marked "[sic]" in the original, suggesting it may be a translation artifact from Hungarian. She stated that these phenomena had kept the people in the region in a nervous state for several weeks. The objects were described as very fast-speeding, with a speed estimate of 12 kilometers per hour mentioned (the OCR extraction of the original document contains notable degradation in key passages, and the precise figures and wording cannot be confirmed with certainty from the available text).
The source noted that this was the first time the niece had mentioned such objects in their correspondence, suggesting the events were sufficiently unusual to prompt her to raise the topic.
The Attached Sketch
The niece included a hand-drawn sketch with her letter showing the formation and suspected course of the objects. The sketch used Budapest and Moscow as geographic reference points, indicating the apparent flight path ran between or in the vicinity of these two cities. This sketch was reproduced in the report file as part of the photostatic copy obtained from the CIA Library.
The formation detail is notable: the niece drew a specific arrangement of the objects rather than describing a single point of light or craft, suggesting either multiple objects were observed or the singular object had a distinctive shape that implied multiple components.
OCR and Legibility Limitations
The released version of the document suffers from significant OCR extraction issues in the passage quoting the niece's letter. Several words and phrases are unclear or illegible in the available text, including details around the objects' characteristics, any mention of a "scientific couple," and precise location information within West Hungary. These gaps mean the full content of the niece's account as originally translated cannot be reconstructed from the released document alone.
Historical Context
The report dates to a period, 1955-1956, when U.S. intelligence services were systematically monitoring unusual aerial phenomena reports from across the globe, with particular attention to the Eastern Bloc. Hungary's strategic position behind the Iron Curtain made civilian correspondence from that region a valuable intelligence collection opportunity. The CIA's willingness to file and preserve a letter forwarded by an emigre source reflects the breadth of the agency's aerial phenomena collection effort during the early Cold War.
The geographic framing of the sketch -- objects moving between Budapest and Moscow -- would have carried direct strategic significance in 1956. Any unidentified aerial phenomena transiting between Soviet satellite states and the Soviet capital would have been of immediate interest to U.S. intelligence regardless of their ultimate nature.
The reference to a duration of "several weeks" and a public "nervous state" suggests the events attracted sufficient local attention to be discussed openly in correspondence, notwithstanding the risks of such discussion for civilians in Soviet-aligned Hungary at the time.
What The Record Supports
CIA-UAP-013 establishes that the CIA received and formally filed secondhand reporting of unusual aerial phenomena observed over West Hungary in 1955, transmitted through emigre correspondence. The report preserves a translated account describing fast-moving objects that alarmed the local population for several weeks, along with an attached sketch of the objects' apparent formation and flight path between Budapest and Moscow.
The record does not provide sensor data, corroborating witness accounts, or independent analysis of the phenomena described. The CIA explicitly marked the information as unevaluated. OCR degradation in the released document further limits the precision with which the original content can be assessed.
The objects described in the niece's letter were not identified. The record does not support conclusions about the nature, origin, or characteristics of the phenomena beyond the fragmentary secondhand description provided. The case remains unresolved.