Joseph Ralston on the Wilson notes
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 9
| Person | Gen. Joseph Ralston (USAF, ret.), Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1996–2000 |
|---|---|
| Asked by | Journalist Billy Cox, 2019 |
| Statement | "I don't recall specifically anything about that in 1997… It could've happened, I just don't know." |
| Subject | The Davis–Wilson notes' account of a 1997 Pentagon oversight panel refusing Adm. Thomas Wilson access to a crash-retrieval program |
| Others asked | Paul Kaminski, Noel Longuemare, Richard Cohn, Doug Nousen: none confirmed it |
| Notes' status | Wilson calls them "fiction"; Eric Davis acknowledged authorship in 2024 |
| Date | 5 July 2019 |
| Topics | Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic), Government programs (topic) |
| People | Joseph Ralston, Thomas Wilson |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 194 |
| Year | 2019 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2019 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 6 |
Retired General Joseph Ralston, a former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said he does not remember ever discussing UFOs with Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson. The disputed Davis–Wilson notes say that a Pentagon special-access oversight body turned down Wilson's request for access to a secret UFO program in 1997.[1][3] "I don't recall specifically anything about that in 1997," Ralston told the journalist Billy Cox. "It could've happened, I just don't know."[1] Cox's original report described Ralston as an ex-member of the Special Access Program Oversight Committee (SAPOC).[5]
Ralston
Joseph Wood Ralston, born in 1943, served in the U.S. Air Force from 1965 to 2003.[6] His senior posts:[6]
- Joint Chiefs. He became the fourth Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1996, serving until May 2000. He was favoured for chairman in 1997, until revelations of an affair in the 1980s.
- NATO. He was NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe from 2000 to 2003.
- Later. In 2006–2007 he was U.S. special envoy for countering the PKK.
He was vice chairman throughout 1997, the year of the events the notes describe.[3][6]
The notes
The notes are typed pages presented as the physicist Eric Davis's record of a conversation with Wilson in Las Vegas on 16 October 2002.[3] Wilson had then just retired as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.[1] The account they give:[1][3]
- The meeting. It was arranged by members of the Las Vegas chapter of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers, at an EG&G building.
- The search. After an April 1997 Pentagon meeting with Steven Greer, Will Miller and the astronaut Edgar Mitchell, Wilson searched for a hidden program. Officials including Under Secretary Paul Kaminski and Michael Kostelnik pointed him to a contractor holding a recovered craft.
- The refusal. The contractor refused to read him in. Around late June 1997 a SAPOC subgroup, the Senior Review Group, "sustained" the contractor.
- The threat. The group's chairman warned Wilson to drop the matter or lose his promotion to DIA director and "1 or 2 stars".
The notes surfaced online in 2019. Davis later said they had been "leaked out of Ed Mitchell's estate".[1][3] On 17 May 2022, at the first public congressional UAP hearing since 1968, Representative Mike Gallagher had them entered into the record by unanimous consent.[1][3]
Cox's inquiries
In 2019 Billy Cox tried to reach as many people named in the notes as possible.[1] The responses:[1]
- Ralston. He could not recall discussing UFOs with Wilson or "anything about that in 1997", but allowed that "it could've happened".
- Paul Kaminski. The former Under Secretary for Acquisition and Technology said, "I don't think I knew Admiral Wilson." He added that he "wasn't aware of all programs", so a special-access program he had no need to know about was "certainly possible".
- Noel Longuemare. Online researchers had identified Longuemare, Kaminski's deputy who succeeded him in 1997, as the likely Senior Review Group chairman. He said he knew nothing about the controversy, and that the group was chaired by the Deputy Secretary of Defense.
- Michael Kostelnik. Cox could not reach him. The notes describe the former Air Force major general as SAPOC's executive secretary.[3]
- "Doug & Rich". Contacted by Cox in 2022, Richard Cohn and Doug Nousen, former Department of Energy intelligence officials, said they did not know Wilson, barely knew Davis, and would not have arranged a meeting.
- Oke Shannon. The former Los Alamos scientist, credited with introducing Davis, said he knew both men.
Wilson and Davis
Wilson has consistently rejected the notes.[1][2]
- "Fiction." In 2020 he told Cox, "It's all fiction. I wouldn't know Eric Davis if he walked in right now." He said the only accurate detail was his meeting with Mitchell in 1997 or 1998, and that the notes contain "demonstrably inaccurate" details.
- AARO and Congress. He said he repeated this to a Senate staffer and in a recorded phone interview with the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and offered in 2022 to testify under oath without immunity.
Davis, who had said only that he could not discuss the notes, acknowledged in a Facebook post in September 2024 that he was their author. This corrects earlier accounts that he had neither confirmed nor denied it.[1][3] Luis Elizondo calls the memo "legit", and suggests Wilson would face a counterintelligence inquiry if he admitted a classified conversation outside a secure facility.[1] AARO's 2024 historical report found "no empirical evidence" of government or industry reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial technology.[1]
Assessment
Ralston's answer, like Kaminski's, neither confirms nor rules out the events in the notes.[1] Supporters argue that officials with knowledge of sensitive programs would be bound to deny or forget them. Sceptics point out that every named participant who has responded, apart from Shannon, either denies the events or cannot recall them.[1][3][4] Davis's admission of authorship confirms where the notes came from, not whether the conversation took place.[1] The text of Cox's original 2019 post on Ralston could not be read: the newspaper's blog server refused access.[5]
People and topics
- Joseph Ralston — Former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs named in the Wilson–Davis notes.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- Wilson–Davis notes — Wilson–Davis notes
- Thomas Wilson — Former DIA director named in the Wilson–Davis notes.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
On the Timeline
- Eric Davis on recovered hardware (2019) (30 April 2019) — Eric Davis says the government holds recovered crashed and landed UFO hardware.
- TTSA Senate briefings (12 July 2019) — DeLonge says To The Stars spent 18 months briefing the Senate and committees.
See every 2019 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Skunk Works — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Billy Cox, "Reviving the W-D memo", Life in Jonestown (Sep 2024) · lifeinjonestown.substack.com · archived copy
- Billy Cox, "Core Secrets UFO memo: 'It's all fiction,' says former DIA director Thomas Wilson", UFO Chronicles (Jun 2020) · theufochronicles.com · archived copy
- "Davis–Wilson memo timeline", daviswilsonmemo.github.io · daviswilsonmemo.github.io · archived copy
- The Wilson memo collection — Anomaly Archives · anomalyarchives.org · archived copy
- not-devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com · not-devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com · archived copy
- Joseph Ralston — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Joseph Ralston”, “Joseph Ralston”, 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.