My Early References to the Wilson Affair, 2006-2018

It occurred to me that although I have mentioned many times that I first encountered the notes by Eric Davis regarding his meeting with Admiral Thomas Wilson in 2006, I have never bothered until now to collect all the instances in which I discussed the matter. The intreped researcher Giuliano Marinkovic prepared a fantastic research document entitled Forsaken Poseiden, in which he details over 193 pages all the many instances in which researchers, including myself, have referred to the Wilson saga, all before the Davis notes leaked to the world in June 2019. I have a personal copy, but I am not sure if the document is available on the web. That said, Giuliano could not possibly find all the references I have made to the Wilson story, so I decided to put it together here. 

I have included a series of screenshots and visuals to help. 

It turns out that while I have typically said I was first shown the document in November 2006, a review of my own words from 2007 and 2008 show clearly that I first spoke about the Wilson affair publicly in November 2006, and had spoken to Wilson in October 2006 (not November, as I had thought). As for nailing down the exact date of when I was shown the two or three pages, I will need to do some calendar digging, but for certain it is 2006. I have always said it was before Steven Greer’s book, Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge, appeared, but it could be that it was before I knew the book was out. I may have some challenges going through my travel schedule for 2006, but I think I can narrow the meeting down to reasonable satisfaction. 

In any case, earlier today I searched through my Presentations folder on my computer, searching for “Wilson” in that folder. Since I keep all of my old lectures fairly well organized, I realized it would be a good idea to find my first lecture in which I mention him. 

What’s a bit surprising is how often I did so between 2006 and 2008. In terms of lectures, I delivered thirteen lectures during those years that told the Wilson story, as I understood it back then. 

During those years, my knowledge of what had happened was much more simplified than what it is now. As many will remember, when I met with my source in 2006, I learned about Wilson’s failed attempt to gain access to an ET-related black budget program mostly through the words of the man explaining it to me, but also by reading a few pages of the key part of Davis’s notes, in which Wilson describes that the material being studied “was not of this Earth — not made by man — not by human hands.” 

There was much that I did not know, including (initially) the identity of Wilson and (right up until 2019) the knowledge that Davis was the author of the notes. I only had the barebones, but fundamentally still correct, version of the story. 

One thing that is important to emphasize is that in all of the early references I made to the meeting of Wilson and the “gatekeepers,” I never once stated that I saw a written transcript of the meeting. Not until my interview with Jimmy Church in December 2018 did I mention a transcript. At that time I spoke with Jimmy, I still had no idea that anyone would ever know about those notes, and I had not a clue that Grant Cameron had a complete leaked copy in his possession.

My earlier statements, especially from 2006 to 2010, were all carefully worded and quite clear, but no mention of seeing a transcript. I know why. It is because my source asked me to be diligent in keeping his identity secret. Talking about having seen a written transcript could easily have revealed his identity — not necessarily to the public, but perhaps to his colleagues or even other people I didn’t know about. Out of respect for his situation, I determined not to do that. 

Even so, when listening to some of the interviews I gave in the earlier years, I clearly referred to the transcript a couple of times. Probably the most telling is from an interview I did with Gene Steinberg of the Paracast on July 1, 2007. Giuliano found this one, for which I am grateful. During the conversation, I brought up the Wilson affair and ended the segment with this statement:

“What I believe is that we do have ultra-secret groups that have access to technology that is not made by human hands.”

That remark, “not made by human hands,” is an obvious reference to the Davis notes, which no one else would see for nearly twelve years. 

This is an important piece of evidence. To those who claim the document is a hoax, they might want to consider how a document that I quoted in 2007 — and which came from the estate of Dr. Edgar Mitchell (as Davis has acknowledged) would be around for so long AS A HOAX? Let me guess. Shall we blame it on Richard Doty? 

I am very glad that for whatever reason I decided to slyly quote the document. No one knew that I was, but I certainly was quoting it. In fact, I would argue that my statement in 2007 offers yet more solid evidence attesting to the reality and authenticity of the document. 

In any case, it turns out the first time I ever mentioned the Wilson affair was at the Crash Retrieval conference in Las Vegas, Nevada in early November 2006. Moreover, less than a week later, when I was back in Rochester, I did a local lecture at an area library and mentioned it again. Here are the slides I created for those lectures. You will see I got Wilson’s title wrong. He was Vice Director for Intelligence for the Joint Chiefs (VJ2, not J2). And it’s not clear that he told Steven Greer anything in the aftermath of the meeting. My guess is that he told Will Miller, who probably then told Greer. But I didn’t know about Miller back then, either. 

Still, these slides are from late 2006. 

Through 2007, I spoke quite a bit about this, as I traveled a lot that year. Major events in Laughlin Nevada, Milan Italy,  South of France, Roswell, the International MUFON Symposium, the X-Conference in Washington, DC, and the Crash Conference yet again later that year, all were venues in which I discussed this matter. I have not found these on Youtube, but I do know that I have DVDs of at least some of these and will try to replicate them.

In any case, no one can accuse me of hiding the information. I did not. But I did protect the identity of my source, as I continue to do. 

I slowed down a bit on the Wilson affair after that but continued on for a 2008 lecture I gave in the Bay Area for a “Conspiracy Con”. This lecture was on UFOs and 911–something unusual for me. This lecture is available on my Youtube Channel. There’s a young version of me at the podium and the slide I used. You can see it’s the same one I had been using previously, mainly because I didn’t have anything new to say on Wilson. Still, you can watch the lecture yourself and listen to the five-minute piece I had on him. (1:00:46 until 1:05:20).

Later that year I wrote a more or less official version of the affair for a small email list (run by Giuliano Marinkovic, whom I did not know much about). This was because Wilson had recently been approached by journalist Billy Cox and issued a flat denial about the matter. Well, he admitted to the meeting with Greer, Mitchell, and Miller, but nothing beyond that. As Wilson had told me in 2006, that part was all “poppycock.” Here is part of what I wrote for Giuliano’s list.

You will notice the basics of what I described are quite accurate and are reflected in the notes — which of course I did not have access to. All I had was my memory of that day in 2006 when I was told (and shown) about all this.

In my view, the next very interesting reference is from another interview I did with the Paracast. I did quite a few with Gene back then. This was from February 22, 2009. The audio link is available and you can easily listen. At around 1 hour and twenty minutes, I talk about Wilson. I nearly gave up the information about having read a transcript.

The part in red is most significant. I talk about the key source who “showed me [pause] how do I put this [pause] showed me information dealing with the person in the Joint Chiefs  reaction upon getting this information.”

It’s a bit of an awkward statement, but this was a radio interview, after all. I discussed my source who “showed me” … and then I stopped myself and actually said out loud “how do I put this,” because I realized I did not want to mention that I was shown a transcript of an interview. So I checked myself and merely said “showed me information.” But the next part is also significant, for I gave a bit more information about the transcript: “the person in the Joint Chiefs’ reaction upon getting this information.” 

Well, that is precisely what the Davis notes portray. Wilson is talking to Davis and giving him his reaction to the entire ordeal of searching for and being denied access to a Special Access Program charged with reverse-engineering ET tech. This interview was from 2009, a full decade before the notes emerged in public. 

I wrote about the Wilson affair in 2009 for the second volume of UFOs and the National Security State, where it gets roughly a full-page treatment. In 2010, we included a briefer version of it in A.D. After Disclosure. 

I have little doubt that I continued over the years to refer to what little I knew of the Thomas Wilson affair. Currently, I can’t find them, but I suspect a few more references are yet to be found. But Giuliano found that important interview I did with Jimmy Church in December 2018, just a few months before the whole thing blew up. 

I can’t remember the exact wording of how Jimmy asked his question, but it was about whether I had ever encountered something really incredible that I had never shared with the world. Immediately I referred to the Wilson notes. 

To my knowledge, this was the first time I explicitly mentioned having seen a transcript. I still would not give up my source, but I was getting tired of this story going nowhere, and I decided that I didn’t care if I mentioned I had actually read something. You will notice that even at that late date, when Grant Cameron had full possession of a genuine copy of the notes, I still didn’t know the author was Eric Davis. 

All in all, there are more than twenty instances in which I spoke about the Thomas Wilson saga, all before the leak of the notes in June 2019. With such a background, it should not be surprising that I would jump in front and support them. 

Again, I will just emphasize. The person who told me about all this in 2006, and who showed me the notes, was and is of impeccable stature, and was in a perfect position to have a copy of the notes. That is all I have said over the years, and until I get formal permission to reveal his identity, or until he is no longer with us, I won’t betray my promise. Having said that, there are a select few people with whom I have shared his identity. I did that because I trust them. 

Beyond that, I really just laugh when I think of how obvious an open secret this whole thing has been, and remains. Besides myself, I know of at least one other prominent researcher connected to the UFO field who was aware of this document, quite possibly for as many years as I have known about it. This person is of very high credibility. I strongly suspect there are others. And of course, among those people who have long been associated with Dr. Davis, the whole thing has been openly known among themselves since he wrote the notes in 2002. 

I recently was shown a “critique” of the document that pointed out an obvious error. The notes indicate that Wilson had met with General Michael Kostelnik in April-June 1997 about where to look for the SAP UFO programs, and that Kostelnik was director of the SAPs and Executive Secretary of SAP oversite in OSD’s OUSDAT in the Pentagon. But, the critic pointed out, Kostelnik had left the position two years earlier, in 1995. He was no longer in the OSD but back at the Air Force Material Command at Wright-Pat in Dayton, Ohio. Why use Kostelnik’s two-year-old knowledge of SAPs in the OUSDAT? Why didn’t Wilson talk to Kostelnik’s successor?

Well, in my five-hour interview with the insightful analyst, “Mr. X,” we discuss this. (forgive me for not knowing exactly where to find it). But the main rejoinder is that because this was not a formal government meeting — it was after all a private meeting between two people who had apparently never met before — we can infer a few things. Mainly, even though Wilson had undoubtedly been given sufficient bonafides about Davis to agree to meet with him, that does not mean he trusted him with everything. Why would he do that? There are many instances in the notes when Wilson declined to share information (“core secret”). He never shared the identity of the man who threatened his career. It’s entirely possible — although if Wilson takes this secret to the grave we may never know for sure — that he mentioned Kostelnik because he didn’t care to reveal the real man’s identity, even to Davis. 

There are a number of candidates. One would be Richard Williams, the Senior Review Group’s Executive Secretary at the time. Another would be Major General William F. Moore. Still others would be Noel Longmuir, John P. White, or John J. Hamre. We don’t know everything, and unless Wilson (or at least Davis, or perhaps someone close to him) talks, we may never get the full story. 

But at any rate it is certainly not outrageous to think that Wilson was playing a few cards close to his chest and would not give up everything to Davis.

Then again, it’s possible that Davis got something wrong while taking his notes — that is, if it wasn’t audio-recorded. 

More to the point, rather than trying to understand the document, some people appear to be interested only in debunking it. It’s a superficial way to go about the process, but attractive to some folks because they think that by finding “errors,” the document must therefore be invalidated. 

RD