Topic
People who made claims from inside government or its contractors, in public or under oath. Their claims are reported as claims. 50 events, newest first.
WhistleblowersOct 2020
Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon said in the documentary The Phenomenon that he received the three Navy videos from a Defense Department contact and gave them to the Times for its 2017 story. The Times said DoD was its on-record source.
Photo: Max Moszkowicz, CC BY 3.0
Whistleblowers2020
Former Pentagon official Luis Elizondo and former intelligence official Christopher Mellon, who joined Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy in 2017, left the company at the end of 2020. They later said the firm's science mission was losing out to entertainment.
Photo: Max Moszkowicz, CC BY 3.0
Whistleblowers1 Jun 2019
Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood told The Intercept that Luis Elizondo had no responsibilities for AATIP while in his intelligence office. Days later spokesperson Susan Gough said he had no assigned AATIP role, starting a long dispute with Elizondo, who says he ran the program.
Photo: Txint445444, CC BY-SA 4.0
WhistleblowersJun 2019
Notes said to record a 2002 talk between physicist Eric Davis and retired Vice Adm. Thomas Wilson, ex-DIA director, about being denied access to a UFO program, spread online. They have no provenance; Wilson called them fiction and denied the meeting, and Davis has not commented.
Photo: U.S. Navy, Public domain
Whistleblowers2019
In sworn 2023 testimony, former intelligence officer David Grusch said that as a National Reconnaissance Office reservist he was a member of the UAP Task Force from 2019 to 2021. He said this work was the basis for his later claims, which the Pentagon disputes.
Photo: U.S. House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, Public domain
WhistleblowersOct 2017
Luis Elizondo, who said he ran the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, left the Defense Department in October 2017, citing a lack of support for the work, and joined Tom DeLonge's To The Stars Academy.
Photo: Max Moszkowicz, CC BY 3.0
Whistleblowers2016
Charles Halt, deputy base commander at RAF Bentwaters in 1980, published The Halt Perspective with former police officer John Hanson, setting out his own account of the Rendlesham Forest events. In press coverage Halt said he believed the objects he saw were extraterrestrial.
Photo: Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt, Public domain
WhistleblowersJan 2015
Retired Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet testified in 2024 that in January 2015, during a pre-deployment exercise, Fleet Forces Command emailed commanders about near-midair collisions with unknown objects, attaching the 'Go Fast' video. He said the email vanished the next day.
Photo: United States Department of Commerce, Public domain
Whistleblowers2014
Former USAF security policemen Jim Penniston and John Burroughs, central witnesses to the December 1980 Rendlesham Forest events, published Encounter in Rendlesham Forest with former UK MoD official Nick Pope. It sets out their first-person accounts plus memos and interview transcripts.
Photo: Simon Leatherdale, CC BY-SA 2.0
Whistleblowers29 Apr 2013
Activist Stephen Bassett's Paradigm Research Group staged a five-day mock hearing at the National Press Club, with six former members of Congress, reportedly paid $20,000 each, hearing witnesses on UFOs. It was not an official proceeding; one panelist called it a pseudo-hearing.
Photo: ajay_suresh, CC BY 4.0
Whistleblowers2013
In the 2013 documentary Mirage Men, former Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent Richard Doty admitted infiltrating UFO circles. The film says Doty and colleagues fed false material to researchers, notably New Mexico businessman Paul Bennewitz.
Photo: The Evening Times, Public domain
Whistleblowers2011
John B. Alexander, a retired Army colonel who had asked about UFOs inside intelligence and defense circles, published a book saying he found no secret government UFO program or cover-up, while still treating some sightings as real and unexplained.
Photo: US mil, Public domain
Whistleblowers27 Sep 2010
At a briefing organized by researcher Robert Hastings, former Air Force personnel including Robert Salas, Robert Jamison and Charles Halt said UFOs had been seen at nuclear weapons sites and claimed some missiles went offline. The accounts were their own; no new official records were released.
WhistleblowersJun 2010
Retired Col. Charles Halt, former deputy commander at RAF Woodbridge, signed a notarized statement saying he believed the objects he saw in 1980 were extraterrestrial and that U.S. and UK services downplayed them. His former base commander rejected the cover-up claim.
Photo: Simon Leatherdale, CC BY-SA 2.0
Whistleblowers26 Apr 2010
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, head of Russia's Kalmykia region, said on Channel One's Pozner program that aliens visited his Moscow apartment in 1997 and showed him their ship. Duma deputy Andrei Lebedev wrote to President Medvedev asking about state-secret risks; the Kremlin declined to comment.
Photo: A.Savin, CC BY-SA 3.0
WhistleblowersJul 2008
Apollo 14 moonwalker Edgar Mitchell told the UK station Kerrang! Radio that Earth had been visited and that the Roswell crash was real, citing briefings from unnamed sources. NASA replied that it does not track UFOs, is not covering anything up and does not share his view.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Whistleblowers12 Nov 2007
A panel of former pilots and officials from seven countries, moderated by former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, described encounters with unidentified objects at the National Press Club and urged the U.S. to reopen official UFO investigations through the Air Force or NASA.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
WhistleblowersMar 2007
Former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, who mocked the 1997 Phoenix Lights at a staged news conference, said he had seen a large craft that night and believed it was not of this world. An astronomer quoted by AP traced sightings that night to flares dropped by A-10 aircraft.
Photo: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 3.0
Whistleblowers2007
Jesse Marcel Jr., son of Roswell intelligence officer Jesse Marcel Sr., published The Roswell Legacy, describing how as a 10-year-old he was shown debris his father brought home in 1947. The military has said the debris came from a balloon; his account rests on childhood memory.
Photo: Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Public domain
WhistleblowersMay 2004
Jean-Jacques Velasco, who had led the French space agency's UFO office SEPRA since 1987, published a book arguing that UFOs exist and probably have an extraterrestrial origin. CNES said the view was his alone, as SEPRA disappeared from its organization chart.
