Las Vegas data-gathering meeting (1996)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Body | Science Advisory Board, National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) |
|---|---|
| Date | 28 January 1996 (the board's second meeting) |
| Place | Las Vegas, Nevada |
| Founder | Robert Bigelow, Las Vegas property developer |
| Agenda | The institute's goals, vision and mission; its dual focus on UFOs and survival after death |
| Recorded by | Jacques Vallée, Forbidden Science 4 (2019), p. 296 |
| Topics | Nuclear & missile sites (topic), Military encounters (topic), Congress & law (topic) |
| People | Jacques Vallée, Harold Puthoff, John Petersen, Robert Bigelow |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 124 |
| Year | 1996 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1996 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 6 |
On 28 January 1996 the Science Advisory Board of Robert Bigelow's new National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) held its second meeting, in Las Vegas.[1] It discussed the institute's goals and its twin interests in UFOs and survival after death. The journalist George Knapp presented the findings of a research trip to the Soviet Union.[1] Jacques Vallée, a board member, recorded the meeting in his journals. His account, published in Forbidden Science 4 in 2019, has been summarized by the researcher Keith Basterfield.[1][3][4]
Setting up NIDS
According to Vallée's journal:[1]
- 16 July 1995. Bigelow told Vallée he would stop funding the "UFO Coalition" of the three major U.S. UFO groups. "I'm forming an Institute and I want to attract world-class scientists to study UFOs and the paranormal including consciousness beyond death."
- Summer 1995. Bigelow sought "a director who's good at administration but also understands the phenomenon". They met on 25 July, and on 11 August Vallée declined the directorship but agreed to consider a board seat. Eight days later Vallée and Hal Puthoff met the board, whose first members were Dean Radin and Diane Arcangel.
- 1 November 1995. Bigelow reported that Kit Green would chair the advisory board. Its members would include Puthoff, Marty Pilch, Dean Judd, General Jim Whinnery, John Petersen and Emily Cook. He was also courting Jessica Utts, Bruce Greyson and Senator Harrison Schmitt. Green set conditions before accepting the chair, and Vallée then joined as a member.
- January 1996. Bigelow said he had "applied the brakes" until the right management was in place. He was interviewing for two posts in consciousness research and one in aerial phenomena; candidates contacted included Larry Lemke of NASA Ames.
The board held an organizational meeting in December 1995, which Vallée did not attend.[1]
The meeting
.jpg)
Those present on 28 January 1996, as listed by Vallée:[1]
- Board and guests. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Peter McDuff, Hal Puthoff, neuroscientist Kenneth Klivington, Marty Pilch, the futurist John Petersen, former senator and Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmitt, physicist John Dale Solem, Dean Judd, statistician Jessica Utts, Air Force Brigadier General Jim Whinnery, Emily Williams Cook, Ted Rockwell and John Alexander.
- Staff. Diane Arcangel was assembling a library.
- The presentation. George Knapp spoke about his research trip to the USSR.
The discussion covered NIDS's goals, vision and mission, and Bigelow's dual focus on aerial phenomena and survival after death. Vallée learned that Bigelow's interest in survival research followed the death of his 22-year-old son, and that his interest in UFOs came from unusual experiences in childhood with his grandparents.[1]
What followed
The board met regularly through 1996 and 1997:[1]
- 31 March 1996. New members included Ian Stevenson. Puthoff and Alexander had visited Colonel Philip Corso, and Roger Leir, Derrel Sims and John Carpenter presented on abductions and alleged implants.
- 1 June 1996. Whinnery spoke on g-forces and consciousness and Edgar Mitchell on near-death experiences. The board leaned towards seeing the implants as conventional metal.
- 3 August 1996. Senator Harry Reid attended a presentation by Vallée. NIDS had hired a biochemist (Colm Kelleher), a microbiologist and veterinarian (George Onet) and a physicist (Eric Davis). By September it employed 11 people and owned a ranch in Nevada.
- 1997. Bigelow split the work into a survival-of-consciousness division and an "aerial phenomena" division watching two ranches. Vallée complained that the board was "too busy trying to invent gadgets… to stop and think seriously about science fundamentals".
By October 1998, reviewing three years of work, Vallée remarked of the Utah ranch that "we have every paranormal phenomenon except for flying saucers".[1]
Significance
NIDS operated from 1995 until it was disbanded in October 2004.[2] In that time:
- Research. It studied cattle mutilations and black-triangle reports, and bought Skinwalker Ranch after Knapp wrote about it in 1996.[2]
- Hotline. Its 1999 hotline received more than 5,000 reports.[2]
- Legacy. Many of those at the 1996 meeting reappeared in later official UFO work. Bigelow's Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies ran the Pentagon-funded AAWSAP program from 2007–2012.[1][2] Puthoff, who had joined NIDS in 1995, joined BAASS in 2008 and co-founded the UFO company To The Stars Academy in 2017.[5]
A blog post on "who else knows", also listed as a source, could not be reached.[6]
People and topics
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- Jacques Vallée — Computer scientist and astronomer, author of the Forbidden Science journals and a central figure in UFO research.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- Harold Puthoff — Physicist who co-founded the SRI remote-viewing research and later worked on AAWSAP and To The Stars Academy.
- John Petersen — Futurist who founded the Arlington Institute.
- Sandia National Laboratories — A U.S. nuclear weapons laboratory in Albuquerque.
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- Robert Bigelow — Businessman who founded NIDS and Bigelow Aerospace and ran the AAWSAP contract.
- NIDS — Robert Bigelow's research institute (1995–2004) that studied UFOs and other anomalies.
- AAWSAP — The Defense Intelligence Agency's UAP research program of 2008–2010, carried out by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies.
- To The Stars Academy — The company founded by Tom DeLonge in 2017 that released the Navy UAP videos.
On the Timeline
- Bigelow recruits consciousness experts (1996) (7 January 1996) — Bigelow tells Vallée he is hiring experts on consciousness.
- Air Force 2025 (May 1996) — An Air Force research paper imagines future air and space capabilities by 2025.
See every 1996 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Los Alamos National Laboratory — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Sandia National Laboratories — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Keith Basterfield, "Jacques Vallée on the National Institute for Discovery Science", UFOs – scientific research (May 2019) · ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com · archived copy
- National Institute for Discovery Science — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Forbidden Science — the journals of Jacques Vallée (Anomaly Archives) · anomalyarchives.org · archived copy
- Forbidden Science series — Anomalist Books · anomalistbooks.com · archived copy
- Harold E. Puthoff — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- blog.adamkehoe.com · blog.adamkehoe.com · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “National Institute for Discovery Science”, “Harold E. Puthoff”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
No discussion yet.