CIA

The CIA is the U.S. foreign-intelligence agency; the wartime OSS was its forerunner. Many people who recur in UAP research worked there, and unconfirmed claims about UFO files and crash retrievals center on it.

Science and technology. The Directorate of Science and Technology (DS&T) is the Agency's technical wing. According to a 2023 Reddit post, Albert Wheelon was its first deputy director (1963 to 1966). Dawn Meyerriecks held the post from 2015 to 2021. In-Q-Tel, the Agency's venture-capital firm, began while Joanne Isham led the directorate. Program B, the CIA's element of the National Reconnaissance Program, ran from about 1962 until the end of 1992, when the reconnaissance program was reorganized under an independent NRO. The directorate's Office of Development and Engineering later managed Program B.

Robertson Panel and remote viewing. In 1953 the CIA convened the Robertson Panel, with help from H. Marshall Chadwell of its Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI). The panel concluded that UFO sightings posed no threat to national security and recommended a campaign to reduce public interest. Kenneth Kress's 1977 article is the Agency's own declassified account of its remote viewing work with SRI. It describes an unnamed OSI officer who continued informal work with SRI in 1973.

The "Weird Desk." The "Weird Desk" is a nickname for an alleged CIA function: an officer who holds the Agency's UFO files. Searches of the CIA Reading Room and other government archives found no document using the phrase, which first appears in a 1995–96 web roster.

Unconfirmed claims. The same Reddit post also calls the DS&T a central administrator of a "UFO Legacy Program" and says its Office of Global Access, set up in 2003, coordinates foreign crash retrievals. A disputed account says a CIA official vetoed a 2008–12 Lockheed Martin plan to pass crash-retrieval material to AAWSAP. No agreement or meeting record has surfaced, and AARO did not corroborate it.