Alexander's A-12 explanation for Holloman
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Type | Event (proposed explanation) |
|---|---|
| Date | May 2002 (conversation recorded by Jacques Vallée) |
| Proposed by | Col. John B. Alexander (U.S. Army, retired) |
| Subject | Rumoured 1964 UFO landing at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico |
| Explanation | Cover story for a test of a malfunctioning A-12 spy plane |
| Source | Vallée, Forbidden Science 5: Pacific Heights (journals, 2000–2009) |
| Status | No documented A-12 incident at Holloman |
| Topics | Secrecy & cover-up (topic) |
| People | John B. Alexander, Jacques Vallée, Robert Emenegger |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 148 |
| Year | 2002 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2002 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 10 |
According to Jacques Vallée's journals, in May 2002 the retired Army Colonel John Alexander told him he believed the rumoured 1964 UFO landing at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico, had been a cover story for a test of a malfunctioning A-12 spy plane. The A-12 was a secret CIA reconnaissance aircraft then being tested in Nevada. The landing story, in which Air Force officers were said to have met the occupants of a craft, was popularised by the 1974 documentary UFOs: Past, Present, and Future. It resurfaced in 2025 in the documentary The Age of Disclosure.[1][2][3][4]
The Holloman story
The story was promoted in the 1970s by the writer and producer Robert Emenegger. He said that in 1971 he was asked to make a film about UFOs using only official Defense Department and NASA material. Accounts differ on whether the request came from the Republican Party, officials at Norton Air Force Base or the Defense Department itself. He said officials promised him film of a 1964 landing at Holloman, but the footage was never provided. A myth that a few seconds of it reached the finished film was later debunked: the shot in question was part of a re-enactment. The documentary, narrated by Rod Serling, Burgess Meredith and José Ferrer, ends with a dramatised version. In it, three objects approach Holloman, fighters are scrambled, and one craft lands on three pads. Three short, blue-grey beings in tight jumpsuits step out to meet the base commander and two scientists before retiring to an inner office. The sequence has been compared to the finale of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The film was nominated for the Golden Globe for best documentary. Jason Colavito commented that no one involved "checked any of the facts at all".[3]
The Air Force has never acknowledged such a landing, and no official records of it have been released. In 2025 the physicist Eric Davis said in the Amazon Prime documentary The Age of Disclosure that former President George H. W. Bush had privately told him in 2003 about a 1964 encounter at Holloman. Davis said Bush described three craft approaching the base. "One of them landed on the tarmac and a non-human entity deboarded the craft that landed and interacted with uniformed Air Force and civilian CIA personnel," he said. When Bush asked for more, he was told he lacked a "need-to-know". No physical evidence was offered.[4]
Alexander's explanation
Alexander, a former Special Forces officer who directed the Advanced Systems Concepts Office of the Army Laboratory Command, told Vallée he thought the landing story had grown out of an A-12 test that went wrong. Vallée recorded the conversation in his journals for 2000–2009. Alexander has generally been open to the reality of UFOs but skeptical of claims about secret programmes. In his own research group, the Advanced Theoretical Physics project, he concluded that "there was no program".[1][2][7][8]
The A-12
The Lockheed A-12, built by Kelly Johnson's Skunk Works for the CIA under Project Oxcart, was the single-seat predecessor of the SR-71 Blackbird. It was developed and tested in great secrecy at Groom Lake (Area 51), where its first, unannounced flight took place on 26 April 1962. By 1963 it was reaching Mach 3.2, and it could fly at more than three times the speed of sound at around 90,000 feet. Thirteen were built, and the fleet made 2,850 test flights from Groom Lake. Several were lost in accidents, and the programme went to great lengths to hide them. When one crashed near Wendover, Utah, on 24 May 1963, the CIA described it in news reports as a Republic F-105. Nearby farmers were told it was carrying atomic weapons, to keep them away. Another A-12 crashed on 9 July 1964 on final approach to its runway when a pitch-control servo froze, and its pilot ejected safely. The A-12 flew operational missions from 1967 until May 1968 and was retired that June. The programme was officially revealed in the mid-1990s.[5]
Assessment
Alexander's explanation fits the CIA's own 1997 history, "A Die-hard Issue: CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947–1990". It said that U-2 and A-12 reconnaissance flights accounted for many UFO reports in the 1950s and 1960s. The A-12's record of secret crashes and cover stories shows the kind of event he had in mind. But there is no documented A-12 incident at Holloman, and the landing story may never have had any real event behind it.[1][5][6]
Vallée's journals continue into the following decade in Forbidden Science 6: Scattered Castles. Commentators have highlighted the journals' frank portraits of figures in the field, such as the former CIA scientist Kit Green.[9][10]
People and topics
- John B. Alexander — Retired Army colonel who organized the 1985 Advanced Theoretical Physics group and wrote UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies and Realities.
- Holloman Air Force Base — An Air Force base next to White Sands.
- 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.
- Robert Emenegger — Producer of the 1974 documentary UFOs: Past, Present, and Future.
- U.S. Air Force — The U.S. military service that ran the official UFO projects from 1947 to 1969.
- Central Intelligence Agency — The U.S. foreign intelligence agency, which has followed UFO reports since the 1940s.
- Area 51 — The secret Nevada test site where spy planes and stealth aircraft were developed.
On the Timeline
- Vallée on privatized UFO research (2002) (6 May 2002) — Vallée writes that UFO research has likely been privatized in the U.S.
- Jean Kisling's airline stranger (29 June 2002) — A French officer tells Vallée a stranger on a 1950s flight claimed to work on recovered craft.
See every 2002 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Jacques Vallée — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Holloman Air Force Base — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Jacques Vallée, *Forbidden Science 5: Pacific Heights* (journals 2000–2009), Amazon · amazon.com · archived copy
- John B. Alexander — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- UFOs: Past, Present, and Future — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "Did former US President George Bush have knowledge of 1964 alien encounter?", WION (Nov 2025) · wionews.com · archived copy
- Lockheed A-12 — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Gerald K. Haines, "CIA's role in the study of UFOs, 1947–90", Studies in Intelligence (1997) · cia.gov · archived copy
- Forbidden Science — the journals of Jacques Vallée (Anomaly Archives) · anomalyarchives.org · archived copy
- Forbidden Science series — Anomalist Books · anomalistbooks.com · archived copy
- Review of Forbidden Science 6 — SFCrowsnest · sfcrowsnest.info · archived copy
- Forbidden Science Dispatches — Tanner Boyle (journal summaries) · tannerfboyle.substack.com · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “John B. Alexander”, “UFOs: Past, Present, and Future”, “Lockheed A-12”, 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.