Arlington Institute board meeting (1999)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Type | Event (board meeting) |
|---|---|
| Date | 3 December 1999, 9:00 a.m. |
| Place | The Arlington Institute, 1501 Lee Highway, Arlington, Virginia |
| Chair | John L. Petersen, founder and president |
| Directors present | Eleven, including R. James Woolsey, Catherine Austin Fitts, Joseph Firmage and Napier Collyns |
| Decision | General agreement that publishing a study by Pickford and Lindemann on "life outside the earth" would be a good idea |
| Source | Board minutes, posted online by Fitts's company Solari |
| 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. It said the study was consistent with its work on "wild cards", unexpected high-impact events. The board then included a former CIA director, R. James Woolsey. The minutes were later posted online by the company of board member Catherine Austin Fitts, Solari. In a 2002 column, Fitts described the board's interest in a much more dramatic way.[1][3]
The institute
The Arlington Institute was led by its founder and president, John L. Petersen, who studied unexpected high-impact events. According to the institute, it grew out of a bipartisan National Security Group project that Petersen co-led in 1986–87, whose final report Petersen wrote. In the early 1990s he worked on futures-research projects for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He also served in personal support roles to the Under Secretary of the Navy and the Chief of Naval Operations. He has been described as a former naval officer. A 1994 Star Gate document describes him as a retired Army colonel once assigned to Army intelligence at Fort Meade. The same document records that, while briefing the Under Secretary of the Navy on non-lethal warfare, Petersen told him of the probable existence of the government's remote-viewing programme. The Under Secretary then asked the Director of Naval Intelligence for a briefing. In the mid-1990s, the institute says, Petersen became convinced humanity faced "a major global shift" within two decades.[4][6]
Its April 2000 board list shows eleven directors. They included Napier Collyns, co-founder of the Global Business Network and a former Shell executive who helped develop scenario planning; retired Major General Neal Creighton; Colin Crook, former chief technologist of Citicorp; and Jack DuVall, a former Air Force captain. Others were Catherine Austin Fitts, president of Solari and a former assistant secretary for housing; and Joe Firmage, chairman of the International Space Sciences Organization and former chairman of the internet company USWeb. R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence and Under Secretary of the Navy, was also on the board. Firmage had said publicly in late 1998 that he had encountered an extraterrestrial being, and stepped down from USWeb amid investor concern. He launched the International Space Sciences Organization's science operations in July 1999.[1][2]
The meeting
The minutes record eleven directors present, with Petersen presiding and the attorney Richard Sawdey taking the minutes. After approving the minutes of the March 1999 meeting and the financial report, Petersen reviewed projects for 2000. These included developing and tracking selected wild cards "as a way to develop improved responses to crises", forming an advisory board and starting a fellowship programme. He then reported that the institute had been approached about publishing a study by Pickford and Lindemann "on the subject of life outside of the earth". "After discussion, there was general agreement that publication of the study would be a good idea and would be consistent with the work otherwise being done by the Institute with respect to wild cards," the minutes say. The board agreed that directors would continue to serve without pay.[1]
Fitts's account
.jpg)
In a September 2002 column, Fitts wrote that in 1998 Petersen asked her to help with a high-level strategic plan for the Under Secretary of the Navy. According to her, Petersen said its purpose "was to help the Navy adjust their operations for a world in which it was commonly known that aliens exist and live among us". She said Petersen asked whether she would like to meet some aliens, and she declined, a decision she said she regretted. At his suggestion she read about 25 books on aliens, the "black budget" and alien technology. At one of her first board meetings, she wrote, the roughly ten people present, including Woolsey, Firmage and Collyns, discussed whether the main project for the coming year should be a white paper on helping Americans "adjust to aliens existing and living among us".[3][8]
Woolsey himself has spoken about UFOs in interviews, including a long interview with The Black Vault's John Greenewald. According to one account, Petersen has also chaired the Lindbergh Foundation, a non-profit founded in 1977 by Neil Armstrong, General James Doolittle and other friends of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh to promote innovation in aviation and the environment. Doolittle has his own link to the UFO subject: he investigated the "ghost rockets" reported over Sweden in the 1940s.[5][8][9][10]
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 aliens living among us, recovered craft or bodies. The decision they record is to publish a study, consistent with the institute's interest in "wild cards". Fitts's wider account of the period is uncorroborated.[1][3][7]
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 →
Further reading
- UFO documents — CIA Reading Room · cia.gov · archived copy
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
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Joseph Firmage”, 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.