Bobby Ray Inman on plausible explanations (2022)
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Contents 8
| Person | Adm. Bobby Ray Inman, USN (ret.), born 1931 |
|---|---|
| Posts | Director of Naval Intelligence (1974–76); NSA director (1977–81); deputy director of Central Intelligence (1981–82) |
| Statement | 2022 interview with the Project Unity channel |
| Gist | During his career he found plausible explanations for UFO reports |
| Background controversy | Bob Oechsler's 1988 taped phone call, published by Timothy Good in 1991 |
| Earlier statement | 1991 letter: "never encountered any credible evidence" of extraterrestrials |
| Date | 16 March 2022 |
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic) |
| People | Bobby Ray Inman, Bob Oechsler |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 205 |
| Year | 2022 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2022 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 8 |
According to the testimony this article draws on, the retired admiral Bobby Ray Inman, former director of the National Security Agency and deputy director of the CIA, said in a 2022 interview that during his career he had found plausible explanations for UFO reports.[1][6] The remarks came in a long interview with the Project Unity channel covering his intelligence career, geopolitics and UFOs.[1][2] They fit what he had written in 1991, when he said he had "never encountered any credible evidence" of extraterrestrial activity. They also cut against decades of claims by UFO researchers that he was a keeper of crash-retrieval secrets.[4][5]
Inman
Inman was born in Rhonesboro, Texas, and graduated from the University of Texas at 19. Commissioned in the Naval Reserve in 1952, he rose through naval intelligence to become the first intelligence specialist to reach four-star rank.[3] He held a series of senior posts:[3]
- Director of Naval Intelligence, 1974–76
- vice director of the Defense Intelligence Agency
- director of the NSA, 1977–81
- deputy director of Central Intelligence, February 1981 to June 1982
After retiring he ran the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation and invested in technology start-ups. He sat on boards including SAIC, until 2003, and Dell.[3] President Clinton named him Secretary of Defense on 16 December 1993, but he withdrew on 18 January 1994 at a combative press conference.[3] He has held the LBJ Centennial Chair at the University of Texas since 2001.[3]
The Oechsler tape
UFO researchers had long cited a telephone call recorded in May 1988 by Bob Oechsler, a UFO enthusiast from Edgewater, Maryland.[4][5] Oechsler said he had approached Inman seeking guidance on getting access to "non-human-made disk technology". In the call, as the British writer Timothy Good printed it in Alien Liaison (1991), Oechsler asked whether any recovered vehicles might become available for research. Inman replied that he honestly did not know, that ten years earlier the answer would have been no, and that Hineman, a retired CIA deputy director for science and technology, might be a better person to ask.[4] Good presented this as a hint that such vehicles existed. When Inman was named Defense Secretary in December 1993, The Independent reported UFO enthusiasts' conviction that he held the secrets of a "cosmic Watergate".[5][7]
A reviewer for Lobster magazine, Dr Victorian, obtained a copy of the whole recorded conversation from Oechsler. He found "not a single specific reference to the subject of UFOs" in it, and a second listener, John Dingley, confirmed this.[4] Victorian also pointed out that Good had left out a letter Inman sent him on 18 December 1989, saying he knew of no information that could help Good's UFO research.[4]
In 1991 Inman wrote twice to Victorian. In the first letter he said he believed the allegations false, knew of no MJ-12 group, and found the book "filled with fabrication and distortions".[4] In the second he made several points:[4]
- He received hundreds of calling cards and did not recall Oechsler's.
- He had spoken to him only because Oechsler used the name of Admiral Lord Hill-Norton, and did not realize until well into the call that it was about UFOs.
- Throughout 22 years in intelligence he had "never encountered any credible evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial or interplanetary entities".
Retired Rear Admiral Shapiro, a former head of naval intelligence, told Inman that Oechsler had totally misrepresented their own conversation. Shapiro also called Oechsler a fraud to Victorian.[4] The earlier version of this article attributed the phrase "totally misrepresented" to Inman directly. In the letter Inman reports it as Shapiro's view, adding his own conclusion that his views had been completely misrepresented.[4] Other figures in Good's chapter, including the astronaut General Thomas Stafford and NASA's reduced-gravity office, also denied Oechsler's accounts.[4]
Other claims
Inman has remained a fixture of UFO lore. The researcher Grant Cameron reports that, at Steven Greer's request, the former senator Barry Goldwater phoned Inman, "long rumored" to be in charge of back-engineering recovered craft. Cameron says the call so frightened Goldwater that he dropped his UFO inquiries.[8]
Significance
Inman's 2022 comments support the view that his 1988 remarks were polite, noncommittal answers rather than disclosures.[1][4] Video of him discussing crash-retrieval claims has continued to circulate.[1][2] He remains one of the most senior intelligence officials to have been drawn into UFO discussions, a reputation built more on what others claimed he knew than on anything he said.[4][5]
People and topics
- Bobby Ray Inman — Former NSA director and CIA deputy director.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- National Security Agency — The U.S. signals intelligence agency, which holds UFO-related intercepts.
- Central Intelligence Agency — The U.S. foreign intelligence agency, which has followed UFO reports since the 1940s.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- Bob Oechsler — UFO researcher who recorded a conversation with Adm. Bobby Ray Inman.
On the Timeline
- Puthoff on withheld materials science (11 February 2022) — Puthoff says private companies withhold materials science information.
- Nuclear lure plan claim (18 March 2022) — A reporter says a plan exists to draw UAP out using nuclear materials.
See every 2022 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- UFO documents — CIA Reading Room · cia.gov · archived copy
- UFO documents — NSA · nsa.gov · archived copy
References
- "Admiral Bobby Ray Inman: intelligence career, geo-politics & UFOs", Project Unity (YouTube) · youtu.be · archived copy
- "Admiral Bob R. Inman on crash retrievals" (YouTube) · youtu.be · archived copy
- Bobby Ray Inman — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Armen Victorian, "Curious liaisons", Lobster 23 (1992) · lobster-magazine.co.uk · archived copy
- Elizabeth Nash, "Cosmic cover-up alleged", The Independent (19 Dec 1993) · ufologie.patrickgross.org · archived copy
- youtu.be · youtu.be · archived copy
- archive.org · archive.org · archived copy
- Goldwater (Grant Cameron) · whitehouseufo.blogspot.com
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia article “Bobby Ray Inman”, 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.
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