Arlington Institute board meeting (1999)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
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| Date | 3 December 1999 |
|---|---|
| Topics | Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic) |
| People | John Petersen, Steven Greer, Catherine Austin Fitts |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 139 |
| Year | 1999 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1999 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 10 |
On 3 December 1999 the board of the Arlington Institute, a futurist think tank in Arlington, Virginia, agreed that publishing a study on life beyond Earth would be a good idea and consistent with its work on "wild cards". The minutes were later posted online by board member Catherine Austin Fitts's company, Solari.[1]
The institute
The Arlington Institute was led by its founder and president, John L. Petersen, a former Navy officer who studied unexpected high-impact events. Its board at the time included former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, investment banker and former assistant housing secretary Catherine Austin Fitts, and internet entrepreneur Joe Firmage, co-founder of the internet company USWeb, who had launched the International Space Sciences Organization that year and was known for his interest in UFOs.[1][2]
The meeting
The minutes record eleven directors present, including Petersen, Woolsey, Fitts and Firmage. After financial business, Petersen reviewed the institute's plans for 2000, which included developing and tracking selected wild cards to improve responses to crises. He then reported that the institute had been approached to publish a study by Pickford and Lindemann on the subject of life outside the Earth, and the board generally agreed it should go ahead.[1]
Fitts's account
In a September 2002 column, Fitts wrote that in 1998 Petersen asked her to help with a strategic plan for the Under Secretary of the Navy, intended to help the Navy adjust to a world in which it was commonly known that aliens existed. She said Petersen asked whether she would like to meet some aliens, and she declined. At one of her first board meetings, she wrote, the roughly ten people present, including Woolsey, Firmage and Napier Collyns, discussed whether the main project for the coming year should be a white paper on helping Americans adjust to aliens living among them.[3]
Assessment
The minutes show that an establishment-connected think tank took the subject seriously enough to consider publishing on it. They do not record any discussion of recovered craft or bodies, and Fitts's wider account of the period is uncorroborated.[1][3]
People and topics
- Central Intelligence Agency — The U.S. foreign intelligence agency, which has followed UFO reports since the 1940s.
- Arlington Institute — The futurist think tank founded by John Petersen in 1989.
- John Petersen — Futurist who founded the Arlington Institute.
- U.S. Navy — The U.S. naval service, whose pilots reported the UAP encounters revealed in 2017.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- Steven Greer — Physician who founded CSETI and the Disclosure Project.
- Stargate Project — The U.S. government's remote-viewing program, which ran from the 1970s until 1995.
- Catherine Austin Fitts — Former HUD official who argues trillions flow to secret programs.
On the Timeline
- Privatized control group claim (1999) (7 July 1999) — An alleged CIA source says the UFO control group became privately funded after 1969.
- David Adair's Area 51 engine claim (1999) — Engineer David Adair says he saw a strange craft at Groom Lake.
See every 1999 event on the UAP Timeline →
References
- Arlington Institute board meeting package, 10 Apr 2000, with minutes of 3 Dec 1999 (PDF), Biblioteca Pleyades · bibliotecapleyades.net · archived copy
- Joseph Firmage — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Catherine Austin Fitts, "What's up with the black budget?", Scoop (Sept 2002) · scoop.co.nz · archived copy
- The Arlington Institute — Powerbase · powerbase.info · archived copy
- Former CIA director James Woolsey on UFOs — The Black Vault · theblackvault.com · archived copy
- Stargate file mentioning John Petersen's briefing — The Black Vault · documents3.theblackvault.com · archived copy
- jstor.org · jstor.org · archived copy
- bibliotecapleyades.net · bibliotecapleyades.net · archived copy
- lindberghfoundation.org · lindberghfoundation.org · archived copy
- files.afu.se · files.afu.se · archived copy
Further reading
- UFO documents — CIA Reading Room · cia.gov · archived copy
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.
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