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FBI Releases 1970s-Era Bigfoot / Sasquatch Files

EnolaGaia

I knew the job was dangerous when I took it ...
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The thing that puzzles me is why the FBI would accept and analyze hair samples collected overseas. Except for issues relating to their counter-intelligence mission, the FBI was strictly limited to investigating domestic cases at the time.
FBI releases 'Bigfoot file' from the 1970s

The federal government took rare action this week on a subject that's typically relegated mostly to Internet forums and conspiracy circles -- the existence of Bigfoot.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday released a cache of files relating to investigatory documents for the creature, also known as Sasquatch, from the 1970s. They document the FBI's testing more than a dozen suspect hairs in 1976 at the request of Oregon resident and Bigfoot investigator Peter Byrne.

The file, released for public view, includes photos, news reports and internal memos and correspondence with the public. Among them are two images showing clumps of the hair.

Byrne asked the bureau to analyze hair and tissue samples he collected in the Himalayas in 1958. He first wrote to the FBI on Aug. 26, 1976, on letterhead that read, "The Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition." The FBI ultimately determined the hairs belonged to a deer. ...

SOURCE: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2019/06/06/FBI-releases-Bigfoot-file-from-the-1970s/5591559832667/
 
Wait a minute ... This story just got very confusing about what happened and when ...

This Washington Post article on the Byrne / FBI story:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/hist...til-now/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.93ad56f96966

... cites a completely different source for the hair / skin sample than the UPI version I initially posted. The UPI version states:

Byrne asked the bureau to analyze hair and tissue samples he collected in the Himalayas in 1958.

The Washington Post version provides an account of a Pacific Northwest sighting sometime in the mid-1970's (apparently 1975) and states the hair / skin sample came from that time and place:

Two men, both biologists and both employees of the U.S. Forest Service, spotted an unidentified walking creature in a forest somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. Last seen: lumbering between a pair of trees. Cue Byrne, who at the time was director of the Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition in The Dalles, Ore.

When Byrne arrived, he noticed the trees stood close together — far too narrow a space for something with broad shoulders and big feet to make a clean egress. And there, between three and five feet off the ground, snagged in the bark, he spotted the tuft of hair and piece of skin he hoped would bring him one step closer to his idée fixe, the sasquatch itself, a towering hominid of North American lore.

Byrne bagged the sample and had it delivered to the FBI. In one letter to the bureau, he asked if an agent could “arrange for a comparative analysis of some hairs that we have here which we are unable to identify.” In another, he stressed the urgency of the inquiry: “Please understand that our research here is serious. That this is a serious question that needs answering.”

Which is it? :dunno:
 
The Washington Post online item includes a link to a downloadable PDF containing the documents at:

https://games-cdn.washingtonpost.co...4bea4f-dd75-4d92-ad49-6e886c2f6836.pdf#page=1

This is a much more convenient format if you wish to save a copy.

After reviewing the documents (again, not for the first time) I find there's no clear mention of any transmittal by which the sample was submitted to the FBI, nor any confirmation that Byrne (or anyone else) stated where the sample had been collected.

There's a 1975 Washington Star article among the documents that claims the FBI had already analyzed such a sample and failed to correlate it with any known species. This couldn't have been the sample for which Byrne requested examination over a year later.

Finally ...

The Washington Post version of the story indicates Byrne hadn't received any final reply from the FBI for over 40 years. This decades delay bit isn't mentioned in any of the other accounts I'd seen to date.
 
Am I reading this correctly, they just looked at the hairs under a microscope?
 
Am I reading this correctly, they just looked at the hairs under a microscope?

Yes. That's essentially the limit of what could be done in the mid-1970's.
 
There's a 1975 Washington Star article among the documents that claims the FBI had already analyzed such a sample and failed to correlate it with any known species. This couldn't have been the sample for which Byrne requested examination over a year later.

I interpreted that claim as the one Byrne was inquiring about. He wanted to see if that was true and by the way, will you test this sample?

The Washington Post version of the story indicates Byrne hadn't received any final reply from the FBI for over 40 years. This decades delay bit isn't mentioned in any of the other accounts I'd seen to date.

That was a new twist too. The original release of this story which came several days before was a non-story. It since became a bit more dramatic. But essentially, it's still a non-story blown out of proportion. It adds nothing, really, to the pile of evidence.
 
I interpreted that claim as the one Byrne was inquiring about. He wanted to see if that was true and by the way, will you test this sample?

Agreed ... If one ignores the mutually contradictory news accounts and focuses on the documents, this is the most defensible interpretation.

This still leaves the issue of the 1975 Washington Environmental Atlas claim that the FBI had previously analyzed a sample (source unknown) and concluded it matched no known species.

Was this an outright lie? A mistake, misstatement, or regurgitated rumor that Byrne took seriously? A reference to an earlier attempt to get FBI review of what some accounts mention as Byrne's own sample(s) collected decades earlier in the Himalayas? :dunno:
 
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