Arthur Bray
Arthur Bray was a Canadian UFO researcher and historian who made significant contributions to the documentary record of early Canadian government engagement with the UFO phenomenon. His archival discoveries in the late 1970s and early 1980s provided critical corroboration of Wilbert B. Smith's 1950 claims about US government UFO classification levels, unearthing primary-source documents that validated Smith's account of his meeting with Robert Sarbacher.
| Role | Canadian UFO researcher and historian |
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Discovery of the Smith Documents
Bray's most notable achievement was locating and publishing two pivotal documents from Wilbert B. Smith's estate:
- The 1950 Department of Transport Memo: Smith's classified memo to the Controller of Telecommunications requesting permission to establish Canada's first official UFO investigation, in which Smith relayed four key claims about the US government's UFO program — claims he attributed to discussions in Washington.
- Smith's Handwritten Meeting Notes: Notes documenting Smith's 1950 meeting with Robert Sarbacher, which provided contemporaneous evidence that Sarbacher had indeed confirmed the existence of a small group headed by Vannevar Bush studying flying saucers, and that the matter was classified higher than the hydrogen bomb.
These documents were discovered in Smith's personal papers and brought to public attention through Bray's research, likely in conjunction with UFO historians aware of Smith's role in founding Project Magnet and Project Second Story.
Historical Significance
Before Bray's archival work, Smith's account of his 1950 Washington meeting existed primarily as secondhand testimony and references in UFO literature. The discovery of Smith's handwritten meeting notes — dated contemporaneously to 1950 — provided documentary proof that the conversation with Sarbacher had occurred and that Smith's recollection of what Sarbacher told him was recorded at the time, not reconstructed decades later from memory.
When Stanton Friedman tracked down Robert Sarbacher in 1983, Sarbacher independently confirmed the substance of what Smith had documented 33 years earlier, validating both Smith's credibility as a witness and the accuracy of Bray's archival findings.
Legacy
Bray's work exemplifies the importance of archival research in UFO studies. By locating primary-source documents created at the time of the events in question — rather than relying solely on later testimony or hearsay — Bray provided the evidentiary foundation that allowed researchers like Friedman and William Steinman to follow up with living witnesses and build a case grounded in verifiable documentation.