Many say no. The document is, in fact, old news. It was released to the public years ago according to AOL News. Physicist Bruce Maccabee asserts that it was one of 1,600 documents that the FBI released in the late 70s. Here's the kicker: the document was never secret - in fact, it was never even classified.

Even Agent Hottel himself may not have seen the evidence of a flying saucer. He was merely reporting what an unnamed informant reported to him. So how reliable is this informant? Yahoo! News reports that physicist and researcher David E. Thomas believes the informant to be a mystery man named Silas Newton, who may have fabricated a previous UFO hoax.

If only the Roswell UFO was caught on film Newton was convicted of fraud in 1952 for claiming to be in possession of alien materials that would be able to locate underground oil. But then again, should we believe Mr. Thomas? Perhaps he, along with Maccabee pinned it all on Silas to pull the "metallic cloth" over our eyes? Who better to cast as a scapegoat than a known con artist?

British UFO expert Nick Pope believes that the memo is the real deal, calling the documents "the real life X-files." The Globe and Mail quotes him as saying: "This document could be the smoking gun that proves UFOs are real." And Pope is far from alone. DarkGovernment.com believes that the memo is further proof in a string of UFO sightings that occurred around the same time in Farmington, New Mexico.

There is little doubt that the Hottel memo is authentic and true, but the story it tells is up for grabs. Is it simply another peg in the tall tale of a con man with a penchant for sci-fi? Or is it just another layer in an ongoing government cover up?