Department of Energy

Department of Energy

Type	Organization
Also known as	Energy Department, DOE, Atomic Energy Commission, AEC
On the Timeline	18 events, 1947–2023

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is the federal department responsible for national energy policy, nuclear power research, the military's nuclear weapons programme and naval reactors. It runs a system of national laboratories, including Los Alamos, Sandia and Lawrence Livermore.^[1] It was created in 1977, but its weapons role goes back to the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), set up in 1946 to take over the wartime Manhattan Project.^[1] Because many early UFO sightings clustered around atomic sites in New Mexico, and because nuclear secrets are closely guarded, the AEC, the DOE and their laboratories appear in many UFO stories. These include the 1950s Project Twinkle as well as recent, unverified claims that recovered "non-human" material was once held by the department.^[2][3]

History

The United States began the Manhattan Project under the Army Corps of Engineers in 1942. In 1946 the Atomic Energy Act created the Atomic Energy Commission to control the project's future and set up the framework for the first national laboratories.^[1] The Energy Reorganization Act of 1974 split the AEC's duties between a new Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Energy Research and Development Administration, which took over nuclear weapons, naval reactors and energy development.^[1] After the 1973 oil crisis, President Jimmy Carter signed the Department of Energy Organization Act. The department began work on 1 October 1977, absorbing the Energy Research and Development Administration and other agencies, with James Schlesinger as its first secretary.^[1]

The DOE now sponsors more physical-science research than any other federal agency, mostly through its national laboratories. The Human Genome Project began as a DOE initiative.^[1] After the 1999 Wen Ho Lee case at Los Alamos, in which all but one of 59 charges were later dropped, Congress created the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) as a semi-autonomous agency within the department to run the nuclear weapons complex.^[1] The department is headquartered in the James V. Forrestal Building in Washington. As of 2025 the Secretary of Energy is Chris Wright.^[1]

The AEC and early UFO reports

The UAP timeline published with Michael Shellenberger's 2024 congressional testimony records the AEC's involvement in several early episodes:

• Reporting, 1947. General Nathan Twining's letter of 23 September 1947, which led to Project Sign, called for sighting reports to be shared with bodies including the Atomic Energy Commission.^[4] See Twining memo.
• Project Twinkle. Around 1950 scientists, security staff and others repeatedly reported unexplained objects near Los Alamos and other atomic and military sites in New Mexico. Project Twinkle studied them at the AEC's Los Alamos laboratory, Sandia Base, White Sands and Holloman. In February 1951 its head, Anthony Mirarchi, told the Associated Press that the objects showed "maneuvered motion" and were not balloons.^[2][5] In 1952 the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board's secretariat advised against declassifying the project.^[2] See Anthony Mirarchi.
• Pantex, 1957. On 7 November 1957 guards at the AEC's Pantex plant in Amarillo, Texas, reported three flashing objects landing near a road that "would slip away from them" when approached.^[6]

Claims involving the DOE and its laboratories

From the late 1970s the department and its laboratories appear in a range of claims. The sources read here do not confirm any of them.

• Cattle mutilations, 1979. An FBI memorandum of February 1979 recorded the New Mexico police officer Gabe Valdez's claim that the DOE and Los Alamos were covering up cattle mutilations.^[7]
• Disinformation, 1980. The forged Weitzel letter, delivered to APRO by an Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent, claimed that a man from the DOE contractor Sandia had warned a witness, and that crashed craft were stored at the Manzano weapons storage area and examined by Sandia.^[8]
• The "Advanced Theoretical Physics" group, 1985. According to the timeline, a classified meeting held under DOE controls in 1985 at BDM's McLean facility considered whether UFO evidence justified a research programme. Notes later published by a former Los Alamos special-projects manager record discussion of UFO characteristics.^[9][10]
• Kissner, 1994. The former New Mexico state legislator J. Andrew Kissner said sources told him that two to four discs recovered in 1947 were analysed by the AEC's Los Alamos laboratory and its Z Division at Sandia Base.^[11] See Andrew Kissner and the 1947 crashes.
• Richardson, 2008. The former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said in 2008 that Los Alamos and the Defense Department had refused him access when he asked about a Roswell crash recovery on behalf of constituents.^[12]
• Material claims, 2020–2022. A former contractor to the Pentagon's AAWSAP programme told the journalist Tim McMillan that the AEC had held UFO material from 1947 and passed it to Lockheed in 1977. The physicist Eric Davis called the source ill-informed and the claim false.^[13] Davis later said the DOE did not own any such material, although its laboratories had analysed some for the "owner" under interagency contracts. The journalist Ross Coulthart said his sources told him the department held "non-human material" before it moved into private aerospace.^[3]
• Mellon, 2021. The former intelligence official Christopher Mellon said that if he were president, the first thing he would want to know about was the DOE's special programmes.^[14]

Not everyone agrees. In his 2011 book, John Alexander, who had worked at Los Alamos's TA-33 site, said there was no black UFO project in the Defense Department or in DOE underground facilities, as some had claimed in the 1980s.^[15] The DOE and NNSA were not listed among the agencies that contributed to the June 2021 intelligence assessment on unidentified aerial phenomena. The timeline's compiler suggests this omission may be significant.^[16]

Legislation

The UAP-related provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2024, known as the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023, set up a collection of government UFO records at the National Archives. They also bar funding for UFO-related material not disclosed to congressional committees. An original proposal for the government to take UFO-related material from private holders by eminent domain was removed, and journalists described the final version as heavily watered down.^[17] See UAP Disclosure Act.

The earlier version of this article said some researchers argue that crash material would be held under the Atomic Energy Act's "born secret" rules, outside Defense Department oversight; that the 2023 UAP Disclosure Act proposal drew on this idea; and that the DOE has been named in claims by David Grusch. These points are not covered in the sources read here.

On the UAP Timeline

• Twining memo (1947) (23 September 1947) — Gen. Nathan Twining writes that the flying discs are real and could be a secret U.S. or Soviet project.
• Kingman UFO crash (21 May 1953) — An engineer using the pseudonym Fritz Werner swears he investigated a crashed craft near Kingman, Arizona.
• Pantex nuclear plant sightings (1957) (7 November 1957) — Guards at the Pantex nuclear plant in Texas report three flashing objects landing nearby.
• Indian Point nuclear plant sighting (1984) (24 July 1984) — Guards at the Indian Point nuclear plant reportedly see a UAP as security systems fail.
• Advanced Theoretical Physics group (20 May 1985) — A secure facility hosts a conference on whether UAP evidence supports a research program.
• Moriches Bay crash claim (28 September 1989) — An anonymous colonel claims a Star Wars weapon downed a UAP in Long Island's Moriches Bay.
• TRESTLE facility and Ron Blackburn (1990) — A Lockheed engineer tells Vallée he helped build the TRESTLE facility.
• Southaven Park crash claim (24 November 1992) — A book says locals believed a UAP crashed near Brookhaven Lab on Long Island.
• Cold fusion and the Energy Department (1999) (17 May 1999) — A journalist reports concerns about the Energy Department and cold fusion research.
• Bill Richardson and the Roswell records (28 June 2008) — Bill Richardson says Los Alamos and the Pentagon refused his questions about Roswell.
• Alexander's no-secret-program conclusion (15 February 2011) — Alexander says there was no secret UAP project at the Pentagon or the energy labs.
• NASA–NNSA planetary defense partnership (22 March 2017) — The nuclear security agency discloses its planetary defense partnership with NASA.
• NNSA rescues the JASON group (25 April 2019) — The nuclear security agency takes over the JASON advisory group contract.
• Atomic Energy Commission UFO materials claim (29 April 2020) — A journalist's source says the Atomic Energy Commission had UAP materials as early as 1947.
• Energy Department labs as analysts claim (2 October 2021) — Eric Davis says Energy Department labs analyzed UAP materials for another owner.
• Energy Department custody claim (2022) (13 January 2022) — Coulthart says non-human material was held by the Energy Department before moving to industry.
• ATP meeting notes release (26 September 2022) — The former Los Alamos manager publishes notes from a 1985 advanced physics meeting.
• Alfred O'Donnell's Area 51 saucer story (28 February 2023) — George Knapp says a former Area 51 contractor manager told him of a recovered saucer.

References

Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “United States Department of Energy”, “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.