Key figures

Leslie Kean

The journalist who co-wrote the 2017 New York Times story and the Grusch story. 5 events, newest first.

GovernmentMedia

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Open Leslie Kean as a timeline

2020s

Media

The Debrief publishes the David Grusch whistleblower story

Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal reported in The Debrief that ex-intelligence officer David Grusch told Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General that the U.S. holds craft of non-human origin. His statements were cleared for release by the Pentagon's prepublication review office.

Photo: U.S. House Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, Public domain

Media

The New Yorker: 'How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously'

Gideon Lewis-Kraus published a long New Yorker account of how UFOs moved from punch line to Pentagon concern, centered on journalist Leslie Kean and the 2017 AATIP story. It ran online weeks before a promised intelligence report on UAP was due to Congress.

2010s

2000s

Government

NASA agrees to new Kecksburg records search to settle FOIA suit

Settling journalist Leslie Kean's federal FOIA lawsuit, NASA agreed to search its archives again for records on the 1965 Kecksburg, Pennsylvania, incident and to pay her legal fees. The court-supervised search ended in 2009 without resolving what fell; many files were missing.

Photo: NASA, Public domain

Media

Leslie Kean reports the French COMETA study in the Boston Globe

Journalist Leslie Kean wrote about a 1999 French report on UFOs by retired officers and experts (the COMETA report) for the Boston Globe, which ran it after about six months of pitching. Kean later said the paper heavily edited it. She went on to co-write the 2017 New York Times story.