Alfred O'Donnell's Area 51 saucer story
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 10
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| Type | Event (second-hand claim) |
|---|---|
| Subject | Alfred O'Donnell, senior manager at EG&G, which managed Area 51 |
| Reported by | George Knapp, Las Vegas investigative journalist (February 2023, Weaponized podcast) |
| Claim to Knapp | EG&G held a flying saucer recovered from New Mexico and a "live being" |
| Claim to Jacobsen | Roswell was a Soviet craft carrying "child-size aviators" made by Josef Mengele |
| Deathbed tape | Said to exist; never surfaced |
| Status | Unverified; no recording or document |
| Date | 28 February 2023 |
| Topics | Crashes & retrievals (topic), Beings & bodies (topic), Secrecy & cover-up (topic) |
| People | George Knapp, Alfred O'Donnell, Bob Lazar, Jacques Vallée |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 214 |
| Year | 2023 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 2023 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 5 |
In February 2023 the Las Vegas journalist George Knapp said that Alfred O'Donnell, a senior manager at EG&G, the contractor that ran support operations at Area 51, had told him the company held a flying saucer recovered in New Mexico and a "live being". O'Donnell told a quite different story to the author Annie Jacobsen, who named him in 2024 as the anonymous source of her claim that Roswell was a Soviet hoax. Neither version has any supporting recording or document.[1][5]
Knapp's account
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Knapp described his dealings with O'Donnell on Weaponized, the podcast he co-hosts with Jeremy Corbell, and they were reported by Liberation Times on 28 February 2023. He said he interviewed O'Donnell many times, having been introduced by O'Donnell's son, Bill O'Donnell, a former Nevada politician. According to Knapp, O'Donnell said "they did have a flying saucer that had been recovered from New Mexico". Of the being, he said: "We didn't know what it was … To tell you the truth, we couldn't communicate with it. In the beginning, we didn't know what it was, we didn't know where it was from. And we didn't know what to do with it." Knapp said O'Donnell compared its appearance to the former presidential candidate Ross Perot rather than a classic "grey". Knapp also described a former woman employee of another defence contractor, Holmes & Narver, who said she knew about crashed saucers. He said she cancelled a meeting with him after being intimidated by unknown agents.[1]
Richard D'Amato
In the early 1990s Richard D'Amato, a Senate staffer overseeing special access programmes, was asked by Senator Robert Byrd, then chair of the Appropriations Committee, and Senator Harry Reid to look into UFO crash allegations. Knapp said he arranged a meeting between D'Amato and O'Donnell, with the approval of EG&G co-founder Herbert Grier. He said O'Donnell told D'Amato nothing, and that O'Donnell's story changed after that. According to Knapp, D'Amato visited Area 51 and could not verify the crash claims. Knapp said D'Amato nonetheless thought it "entirely feasible" that a cover-up existed inside a private company such as Lockheed Martin, EG&G or Northrop Grumman. D'Amato's public statement is more cautious. He said he met "a number of people who had made public statements on the matter" and reported to the senator "that the basis for such allegations did not appear to merit any further Senate investigation". He said he had no personal opinion and considered the inquiry closed.[1]
The deathbed tape
Knapp said O'Donnell was warned not to speak to him again, but agreed to record a tape before he died that would be given to Knapp. Both O'Donnell and his son later told Knapp a deathbed confession had been made. No such tape has surfaced.[1]
Jacobsen's version
O'Donnell gave a very different account to Annie Jacobsen for her 2011 book Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base. There he was an unnamed engineer and Manhattan Project veteran. He told her Roswell was not an alien event. In his account, Joseph Stalin had recruited the Nazi doctor Josef Mengele to produce "grotesque, child-size aviators", remotely piloted and landed in America to cause panic like Orson Welles's 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast. The craft crashed, and the bodies were deformed children about 12 years old. In a 2024 interview with Lex Fridman, Jacobsen named her source as O'Donnell, who had worked for EG&G at Area 51 in the early 1950s.[1][5]
Historians, journalists and aviation experts widely dismissed the claim. The space historian Dwayne Day called the book "poorly-sourced" and reliant on one anonymous source. Jeffrey Richelson and Robert Norris wrote that "there are so many mistakes that it is hard to know where to begin". The historian Richard Rhodes noted that all of the source's claims already appeared in existing Roswell and Area 51 literature. Knapp also disputed the Soviet version. After the Cold War, Russian contacts including the aerospace scientist Valery Burdakov told him the Soviets had been just as puzzled by Roswell. In a 1993 interview Burdakov said Sergei Korolev had told Stalin that UFOs "were not manufactured in the United States, or any other country".[1][5]
Context
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EG&G (Edgerton, Germeshausen and Grier) was founded by the MIT engineers Harold Edgerton, Kenneth Germeshausen and Herbert Grier. Its high-speed photography and timing work served the Manhattan Project, and it incorporated in 1947. In the 1950s and 1960s it was a prime contractor for the Atomic Energy Commission at the Nevada Test Site. In the 1980s it supported Lockheed's Skunk Works on stealth technology. Its "Special Projects" division ran the "Janet" flights from Las Vegas that carry workers to remote government sites. It was absorbed by URS Corporation in 2002, and the name was dropped in 2010. Knapp first reported Bob Lazar's claims about the nearby "S-4" site in 1989. Lazar said his job interview was with EG&G, which said it had no records of him.[2][3][4]
Assessment
The account is second-hand, relayed by Knapp decades later, and no recording or document supports it. O'Donnell's own versions contradict each other: a recovered saucer and live being to Knapp, a Soviet hoax with deformed children to Jacobsen. Liberation Times noted that a deathbed tape, if it existed, would support Lazar's claims, but none has been produced.[1][5]
People and topics
- George Knapp — Las Vegas journalist who broke the Bob Lazar story and co-wrote Skinwalkers at the Pentagon.
- Area 51 — The secret Nevada test site where spy planes and stealth aircraft were developed.
- EG&G — The contractor that ran support services at the Nevada Test Site and Area 51.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- Alfred O'Donnell — Former EG&G manager named by George Knapp.
- Department of Energy — The U.S. department that runs the nuclear weapons laboratories.
- Bob Lazar — Man who claimed in 1989 that he worked on alien craft at S-4 near Area 51.
- S-4 — The site near Area 51 where Bob Lazar said he worked on alien craft.
- Jacques Vallée — Computer scientist and astronomer, author of the Forbidden Science journals and a central figure in UFO research.
On the Timeline
- NRO Sentient system (27 February 2023) — An NRO FOIA reply describes its AI system 'Sentient' detecting a Tic Tac-shaped object in 2021.
- Coulthart on Huntsville physicists and BAE (28 February 2023) — Ross Coulthart says some physicists in Huntsville disappeared and BAE deserves scrutiny.
See every 2023 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- Area 51 — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Christopher Sharp, "Former chief for defense contractor that ran Area 51 claimed knowledge of recovered 'flying saucer' and 'live being'", Liberation Times (Feb 2023) · liberationtimes.com · archived copy
- Bob Lazar — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- George Knapp — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- EG&G — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base – Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Bob Lazar”, “George Knapp”, “EG&G”, “Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base – Wikipedia”, 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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