Hoover Thanked Pratt for FBI Coverage

A four-page FBI file was recently obtained from the National Archives responsive to the late Robert Vance Pratt (1926-2005). Pictured below in the October 20, 1981, edition of The Palm Beach Post, Bob Pratt was later termed "an evangelist for UFOs" by the same newspaper after his passing in 2005. The four pages of records obtained by Expanding Frontiers Research include two 1960s thank you notes from FBI Dir. J. Edgar Hoover to Pratt for his coverage of Hoover's public remarks and the Bureau.

Pratt was a lifelong newspaperman and wrote extensively about UFOs for the infamous National Enquirer from 1975-1981. He continued to investigate and write about UFOs for decades after leaving the tabloid. Pratt was the author of the book UFO Danger Zone: Terror and Death in Brazil - Where Next? and a co-author of Night Siege: The Hudson Valley UFO Sightings with Dr. J. Allen Hynek and the later-disgraced Philip J. Imbrogno. The latter's claims of Special Forces service and earning a PhD from MIT could not be verified, as demonstrated in 2011 by Lance Moody. Imbrogno's then-co-author, Rosemary Ellen Guiley, soon accused him of outright fabrications and subsequently dissolved their professional partnership, as confirmed at the time by this writer.

Recipients of cash awards for the 1975 National Enquirer UFO story of the year.

The four-page FBI file responsive to Pratt consists of two one-page thank you notes written on behalf of Hoover for two different articles published by Pratt. The one-page articles were each archived and included in the file as well, totaling the four pages.

One of the articles was a 1965 editorial titled Hoover on Delinquency. The other was a 1961 clipping, Word of Caution to Joiners, which emphasized Hoover's warnings to consumers to fully investigate before joining any group claiming to be anti-Communist. "It may be - or it may not," the article cautioned. The message also stated there was "little choice between Fascism and Communism," adding, "Both are totalitarian, anti-democratic..."

Hoover's response to the 1961 article:

The FBI took its media presence quite seriously during the mid-20th century. A number of declassified files exist that show inner-agency discussion of various journalists, their coverage of the Bureau, and how writers might be most effectively influenced to produce desired stories and coverage.

FBI efforts included providing a tour of Bureau headquarters to Col. Joseph Bryan III, a newspaperman and freelance writer under consideration to produce a series of stories on the FBI for the Saturday Evening Post in 1947. Though the Bureau identified Bryan as suitable for the work, up to and including extending an offer to provide him with an office and typewriter at headquarters so he could ask questions in real time as they might arise, Bryan graciously bowed out of the arrangement. As covered in this writer's book Wayward Sons: NICAP and the IC, this was during the same time as when Bryan was recruited for work as a psychological warfare specialist with the Office of Policy Coordination, a covert arm of the CIA and State Department, and may well be why he would not commit to the assignment with Saturday Evening Post. Bryan went on to be a staple of the Board of Governors of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.