Leslie Kean
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 👤 Person
Contents 6
| Type | Person |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Kean |
| On the Timeline | 3 events, 1965–2016 |
Leslie Kean is an American investigative journalist and author whose reporting on unidentified flying objects helped bring the subject into mainstream news. She co-wrote The New York Times' December 2017 story revealing the Pentagon's AATIP program and, in June 2023, the first report of whistleblower David Grusch's claims.[1][2]
Background
Kean grew up in New York City and attended the Spence School and Bard College. She comes from a prominent New Jersey political family: she is the daughter of environmentalist Hamilton Fish Kean, granddaughter of Congressman Robert Kean and niece of former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean. She worked as a photographer at Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology and helped found a Zen centre in upstate New York.[1]
Early journalism
After travelling to Burma in the 1990s to interview political prisoners, Kean became an investigative journalist, producer and on-air host at the Pacifica radio station KPFA in Berkeley, California, working on the news program Flashpoints, which covered wrongful convictions and criminal justice. With Alan Clements she wrote Burma's Revolution of the Spirit (1994).[1]
UFO reporting
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Kean began writing about UFOs in 2000. Her book UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record (2010), with a foreword by John Podesta, collected first-person accounts by military and aviation officials from several countries and argued for an official U.S. investigative agency; it became a New York Times best-seller.[1][3] She also pursued Freedom of Information Act litigation against NASA over records of the 1965 Kecksburg incident.[4]
On 16 December 2017, with Helene Cooper and Ralph Blumenthal, she published "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program" in The New York Times, alongside an article on the 2004 Nimitz encounter. The stories revealed the roughly $22 million Pentagon program and published Navy infrared videos, starting the modern era of UAP coverage.[2][5] She and Blumenthal wrote follow-up articles for the Times.
On 5 June 2023, Kean and Blumenthal published, in the online outlet The Debrief, the claims of former intelligence officer David Grusch that the United States had recovered craft of non-human origin; Kean said larger outlets had not published the story in time and that she had vetted Grusch through former officials.[6][7]
Other work
Kean's book Surviving Death: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for an Afterlife (2017) was adapted into a 2021 Netflix documentary series. Critics, including journalist Nicholson Baker writing in New York magazine, have examined her role in the UFO movement and her reliance on official sources whose claims are hard to verify.[1][8]
On the UAP Timeline
- Lockbourne AFB object and Kecksburg (10 December 1965) — An Air Force guard says he watched over an object brought from Pennsylvania before it went to Wright-Patterson.
- Will Miller on senior officials kept in the dark (2000) — A retired Navy commander says senior officials are kept away from UAP knowledge.
- Christopher Mellon goes public (2016) (9 May 2016) — Former Pentagon intelligence official Christopher Mellon speaks publicly about UAP for the first time.
References
- Leslie Kean — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- "Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program", The New York Times (16 Dec 2017) · nytimes.com · archived copy
- Leslie Kean — Penguin Random House author page · penguinrandomhouse.com · archived copy
- "Nasa told to solve 'UFO crash' X-File", The Guardian (2007) · theguardian.com · archived copy
- "2 Navy Airmen and an Object That 'Accelerated Like Nothing I've Ever Seen'", The New York Times (16 Dec 2017) · nytimes.com · archived copy
- L. Kean and R. Blumenthal, "Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin", The Debrief (5 Jun 2023) · thedebrief.org · archived copy
- "Why The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Politico Didn't Publish the UFO Story", Vanity Fair (8 Jun 2023) · vanityfair.com · archived copy
- Nicholson Baker, "How We Lost Our Minds About UFOs", New York Magazine (31 Jan 2024) · nymag.com · archived copy
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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