The amazing story of the now-famous Wilson-Davis Memo and the strange way top UFO investigators first revealed it
Now I continue my series about high-positioned scientists, military officers and other people who have reported direct knowledge of alien technology currently in U.S. Government possession — but is being kept secret from the public.
The challenge I face today is a difficult one because will discuss what UFO researcher Richard Dolan has dubbed:
“The UFO Leak of the Century.”
It’s the so-called “Admiral Wilson Memo,” sometimes also called the “Wilson-Davis Memo” and/or “The Core Secrets Document.”
Readers who follow UFO realm developments may be familiar with the Wilson Memo. But for those who are not, I’ll cut to the chase and give you the “core bombshell” or the “active ingredient” of what the Wilson Memo contains:
It’s a document recovered from the files of a deceased Apollo astronaut which suggests — SOME WOULD SAY PROVES — that our government, and a private corporation company it contracts with, is in possession of a recovered alien or nonhuman spacecraft. The memo suggests that a Special Access Program (SAP) has at least one bona fide UFO in mostly undamaged and possibly “working condition.”
The Wilson Memo, 13 to 15 pages long, was written in 2002 by Dr. Eric W. Davis, a Ph.D. astrophysicist with an immaculate reputation among his peers in the realm of mainstream science. He is currently the Senior Project Engineer for The Aerospace Corporation.
Dr. Davis wrote the memo to memorialize the key takeaways of an interview he conducted in 2002 with U.S. Navy Admiral Thomas R. Wilson who had recently retired from his position as head of the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency). He was the top man at the DIA from 1999 to July 2002, appointed by President Bill Clinton.
Now I’ll show you a page section from the Wilson Memo in which I have highlighted the part where the alien technology is mentioned most directly. Note that the one asking the questions here is Dr. Davis and the person answering is Admiral Thomas Wilson:
“Technology not of this Earth.” That’s as clear-cut and straightforward as it gets — but ah — as they say, the devil is in the details.
Even those well-versed in their ufology find the Wilson Memo presents — especially at first glance — a highly convoluted story making it difficult to understand.
Top ufologists like Richard Dolan, Grant Cameron, Jay Anderson at Project Unity, Curt Jaimungal and many others have come out with eye-watering 3-hour, 4-hour and 5-hour videos that discuss what they call the “Earth shattering” implications of the Wilson Memo.
These hours-long presentations involve intensely detailed, granular and hair-splitting analysis that causes even dedicated UFO enthusiasts to claw at their own eyeballs, resort to intoxicating drinks/herbs or maybe just “check out” of the discussion sooner than later.
In fact, Grant Cameron recently presented a consciousness-numbing 3-plus-hour video dedicated to discussing just one relatively minor figure whose name appeared in the 15 pages of the Wilson Memo. That man is Oke Shannon (first name pronounced “Oak”).
Almost four years ago now, Richard Dolan and a mysterious guest who is only identified as “Mr. X” put out a remarkable 5-hour, nonstop, no-bathroom-or-coffee-breaks video in which they discussed — with unflagging energy and enthusiasm across all five hours-– a supremely detailed, atomic-level, sub-atomic level, surgical dissection of the Wilson Memo.
Just prior to that, “Mr. X” did a three-hour mini-talkathon video with Jay Anderson over at Project Unity.
Numerous other UFO webcasts, podcasts and radio shows featuring the glitterati of the UFO investigation community have hammered away at the Wilson Memo for countless hours over the past several years since the document was “leaked.”
TECHNICALLY, IT’S NOT A ‘LEAK’
I put the word “leaked” in quotes because, technically, the Wilson Memo is not a “leaked” document. That term suggests a government document that has been officially classified and has been allowed to slip out into public view illegally before it has been declassified.
The Wilson Memo was never a classified document because it was never a government document, but rather is the property of a group of private researchers that included the likes of Dr. Steven Greer, Dr. Davis and Apollo 14 moonwalking astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell.
In fact, the Wilson Memo was retrieved from the files of Edgar Mitchell after he died in 2016. That’s where it comes from. These files were set to be simply tossed out until they were rescued by an associate of Mitchell.
It was then an Australian man by the name of James Rigney, a self-described “UFO enthusiast,” who combed through boxes of Mitchell’s documents and struck paydirt by finding the Wilson Memo.
Rigney then flew to Nevada in 2018 to attend the Starworks USA conference (organized by noted ufologist Paola Harris) in Las Vegas. The keynote speaker at the event was Grant Cameron. It was there that Rigney was able to connect with Cameron and show him the Wilson Memo on an iPad.
Again, Cameron quickly noticed the name “Oke Shannon” in the pages and immediately suspected the document was legit. Cameron called Rigney two hours later from his car and told him that “this was the most important document he had ever seen” in his 40+ years of UFO research.
I’ll give more details on the Wilson Memo later, but first …
MY PUBLIC SERVICE TO YOU
I recently decided to sit my ass down and wade through the longest and meatiest of the Wilson Memo leak discussions that have proliferated like mushrooms over the past 4+ years. I listened, minute-by-minute through about 25 hours of Wilson Memo analysis across an array of presenters, including hardcore skeptics.
I did so as a public service to all of you.
My goal was to demystify the Wilson Memo for the average UFO buff — the type of people who have real lives, jobs and children to raise & get ready for school and, thus, may not have time to listen to 5-hour sessions featuring the likes of Richard Dolan and “Mr. X”, or Grant Cameron and his elite cadre of UFO investigative insiders pour over the implications of the Wilson Memo for countless hours.
As a side note: Let me first give you just a flavor of the kind of breathless superlatives — the sensational descriptors — that are called out by the participants during the course of all of their discussions of the Wilson Memo.
I jotted them down as I listened. These are actual direct comments as elicited by the Wilson Memo UFO investigators and commentators:
“Stunning!”
“Historic!”
“Staggering!”
“Mind-blowing!”
“Once in a lifetime!”
“Absolute vindication of the UFO community!”
“Unprecedented!”
“The ultimate smoking gun!”
“Paradigm shattering!”
“Challenging to reality!”
“The single document that can finally smash through and tear down the deepest secrets of the military-industrial complex and undo decades of the deepest UFO secrecy!”
Yes! And that’s just a short list of the emotional outbursts that are common among people who have absorbed the implications of the Wilson Memo.
BUT NOW GET THIS — BECAUSE THIS IS AMAZING:
Two of the very tip-top names in UFO investigation and advocates for disclosure— Richard Dolan and Grant Cameron — once they had full possession of the Wilson Memo and had verified it (to their satisfaction) as a true and legitimate document…
… both found that they could not get themselves to reveal it directly to their large audiences in the UFO community!
That’s right!
Cameron became so disturbed upon seeing the Wilson Memo “he could not sleep at night as he laid awake” just contemplating the implications of this bombshell document. This agitation went on for six months.
Indeed — the Wilson Memo was apparently so radioactive — that Richard Dolan also hesitated for months rather than revealing it to the tens of thousands of subscribers of his YouTube channel.
At one point, Grant Cameron and Richard Dolan privately discussed the Wilson Memo. Cameron said, “I hoped that Richard (Dolan) would be the one to release it while he was hoping that I would release it, but I just didn’t want to be the one to do it.”
Grant Cameron also considered publishing the Wilson Memo in a new book he had coming out soon, Managing Magic, but only in heavily redacted form. However, he then decided that even a redacted form of the Wilson Memo in the appendix of his book was just too hot (disruptive? problematic? toxic? or what?) to reveal to a wider audience!
In a Jan 4, 2024, interview on Theories of Everything with host Curt Jaimungal, Richard Dolan said:
“I didn’t want to leak it myself. Like, I didn’t want to be that guy. And Grant didn’t either. He’s, like, now you are in the same box that I am in. What are you going to do? So, my plan was, I was going to wait. I was going to wait a limited amount of time, and if no one else would leak them, I was just hoping someone else would leak them. I didn’t want to be the one to do it. But I decided if no one else was going to leak them maybe by the summer — maybe by the late summer — I would do it and then just take the shit storm that would happen as a result of that.”
THE SOLUTION: “RE-LEAK” THE “LEAKED” DOCUMENT!
So, how did these two A-list, intrepid UFO investigators handle the plutonium-grade Wilson Memo? Rather than just present it directly to their audiences, they decided to re-leak the leaked Wilson Memo!
That’s right! That was the solution!
As far as I can tell, it was Grant Cameron who began to quietly send out copies of the Wilson Memo to some of his key associates, including folks he described as “some of the UFO young guns.” By that, he meant the fresh, rising stars in UFO investigation — some good examples might be Jay Anderson and His Project Unity site and Curt Jaimungal and his Theories of Everything show.
Keep in mind I have no idea it was Jay Anderson or Curt Jaimungal to whom Cameron sent copies. Whatever the case — and sure enough — the Wilson Memo eventually found its way out into the open — onto the internet.
The strategic re-leak of the leaked memo was now accomplished!
At one point, the Wilson Memo popped up on Reddit where it languished for some time without creating any waves at all. However, some of the sharper and more observant UFO enthusiasts in UFO Study Land recognized the Wilson Memo for what it was, and it began to create if not waves, ripples.
At that point, Richard Doland, noticing the Wilson Memo was free and unfettered and cruising the cyber-freeway of the internet — and that the Apocalypse, End Times, plagues, floods, wailing & gnashing of teeth and mass suicides did not subsequently fall upon humanity — felt unchained to go ahead and reveal all in a formal program about the Wilson memo for his official Intelligent Disclosure YouTube site in 2019.
THE SOCIOLOGY OF UFO INFO DISSEMINATION
The reason I took pains to describe the roundabout way that the Wilson Memo finally became public is that it tweaks my “inner sociologist.” By that, I mean it provides insight on how critical UFO information trickles its way into the public domain and popular awareness.
Even among dedicated searchers for the truth, such as Richard Dolan and Grant Cameron, their first instinct after obtaining a highly significant piece of information was to suppress the information, albeit temporarily, they said.
This is in no way a criticism of Dolan or Cameron. Beyond doubt, they had reasons for wanting to “hit the pause button” before they told others about what they had uncovered. Not the least of these reasons is the hard fact that the two principals of the Wilson Memo — Admiral Wilson and Dr. Eric Davis — refuse to confirm the contents of the document!
In fact, Admiral Wilson admitted to Richard Dolan in an interview that, although he did take a meeting with Dr. Davis, “the rest is poppycock,” By “poppycock” Wilson was referring to the UFO stuff.
Notice also that astronaut Edgar Mitchell kept the Wilson Memo in his files and never leaked it to anyone. He took his knowledge of its contents with him to his grave — and Mitchell was an advocate for UFO disclosure.
Not even the passionate disclosure icon Dr. Steven Greer himself revealed the Wilson Memo, even though he referenced it tangentially in his book Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge. That was published way back in 2006.
Furthermore, both Dolan and Cameron have certain relationships with most of the people involved with the creation of the Wilson Memo. They have these important connections/insider contacts to consider for complex reasons as they ply their trade in UFO research and in pushing for disclosure.
And they had even more reasons but …
THE LARGER IMPLICATIONS IS …
If top UFO investigators, and powerful, respected disclosure advocates, such as Dr. Edgar Mitchell, find it difficult to reveal bombshell information about UFOs to the public — think of how much more difficult it is for the members of the mainstream media to reveal the same.
Infact, one might say it is 10 times more difficult — or even 100 times more difficult — for mainstream journalists to break key UFO stories. The constraints they are laboring under are far more severe than that which inhibit private, professional UFO investigators.
Just ask New York Times reporters Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean, two of the journalists who broke the U.S. Navy confrontation with “UFO Tic Tacs” story. They’ll tell you that simply reporting everything they know about UFO secrets — and they know a lot — is extraordinarily difficult.
Both Blumenthal and Kean have said as much many times in interviews.
Both express enormous frustration in not being able to convince their editors to run even fully verified stories —stories with real sources and names on the record — in the pages of the New York Times.
Along with the verified stories, reporters like Blumenthal and Kean have scads of other information about such things as UFO crash retrievals — which Kean has admitted — but that they simply can’t let out this information to the public for an array of complex reasons, and not just the restraints of their editors, and not just sources that won’t go on record.
Just as we have seen with Richard Dolan and Grant Cameron, a variety of constraints and pressures come to bear.
What we call “The Media” is a complex institution that has evolved over centuries. In the course of that evolution, like any institution, such as the Catholic Church or the U.S. Government, a vast range of internal protocols, methods, do-and-donts, restraints and liberties, powers and weaknesses, traditions and methodologies inform the eventual end product it produces and its ongoing process.
That’s why I always cringe when UFO folks cry out “media censorship!” or “The CIA tells the media what they can and cannot print!” or “the media is unwilling to take the UFO issue seriously!” It’s not so much that all these notions are total bullshit —it’s that these statements are something worse than bullshit — they’re simplistic.
I have worked in the news business as a reporter, I have worked for the government as an information specialist, and I worked for several years inside the aerospace sector as a technical writer and public relations consultant.
What I can tell you is that all of them are far from perfect, but more importantly, I can tell you that one’s view of these institutions looks drastically different when you are on the inside of them than when you are on the outside.
That’s why I can understand why Richard Dolan and Grant Cameron had such difficulty in revealing the contents of the Wison Memo, and why they chose the seemingly bizarre action of “re-leaking the leak.”