vault backup: 2026-10-03 20:19:03

80 - SOURCES/Wilson-Davis Memo.md

@@ -12,10 +12,15 @@ relations:
     start: 2002-10-16
     role: "the notes record his account of a June 1997 attempt as Joint Staff intelligence official to enter a contractor program; Wilson told Billy Cox in 2008 'Never' and in 2020 'It's all fiction'"
     fn: 3
+  - type: subject_of
+    with: "[[House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]]"
+    start: 2022-05-17
+    role: "a 15-page document headed EWD NOTES 10/16/02 is posted as item SD001 of the committee's hearing record on congress.gov; Elizondo wrote that Representative Mike Gallagher introduced the memo at the hearing"
+    fn: 10
 updated: 2026-10-03
 ---
 
-The [[Wilson-Davis Memo]], also known as the "Wilson/Davis document," is a 13-page document that purports to be a summary of a 2002 conversation between astrophysicist [[Eric Davis]] and Vice Admiral [[Thomas R. Wilson]], who was then the Director of the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] (DIA). The memo details Admiral Wilson's alleged discovery of and subsequent denial of access to a deeply hidden U.S. government program that was reverse-engineering technology recovered from crashed [[Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena]] (UAP).[^1]
+The [[Wilson-Davis Memo]], also known as the "Wilson/Davis document," is a 13-page document that purports to be a summary of a 2002 conversation between astrophysicist [[Eric Davis]] and Vice Admiral [[Thomas R. Wilson]], who was then the Director of the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] (DIA). The memo details Admiral Wilson's alleged discovery of and subsequent denial of access to a deeply hidden [[U.S. government]] program that was reverse-engineering technology recovered from crashed [[Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena]] (UAP).[^1]
 
 ### The Memo's Content
 
@@ -27,7 +32,7 @@ The memo was written by Eric Davis as a summary of his conversation with Admiral
 
 ### Significance
 
-The Wilson/Davis Memo is considered a key piece of evidence by many in the UAP disclosure movement. It provides a detailed, firsthand account of the existence of a "Legacy Program" within the military-industrial complex that controls access to recovered UAP technology. The memo highlights the extreme level of secrecy surrounding this issue and the power of private contractors to operate outside of normal government oversight. The allegations in the memo, if true, represent a profound failure of transparency and accountability within the U.S. government.[^1]
+The Wilson/Davis Memo is considered a key piece of evidence by many in the UAP disclosure movement. It provides a detailed, firsthand account of the existence of a "[[Legacy Program]]" within the military-industrial complex that controls access to recovered UAP technology. The memo highlights the extreme level of secrecy surrounding this issue and the power of private contractors to operate outside of normal government oversight. The allegations in the memo, if true, represent a profound failure of transparency and accountability within the U.S. government.[^1]
 
 
 ### The notes as leaked
@@ -38,7 +43,7 @@ The first page records the arrangement: "Rich says to go to [[EG&G]] Special Pro
 
 ### Wilson's official record
 
-The Congressional Record of August 1, 2002 carries Senator [[John Warner]]'s tribute: Wilson, born in [[Columbus, Ohio]], was a 1968 graduate of [[Ohio State University]], was commissioned an ensign in March 1969 after [[Officer Candidate School]] at [[Newport, Rhode Island|Newport]], and would retire from active service on August 30, 2002 after thirty-three years. It lists "Vice Director for Intelligence, J2 on the [[Joint Staff]] in the [[Pentagon]]," "Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Military Support," and "Director for Intelligence, J2 on the Joint Staff," and records that "In July 1999, Admiral Wilson moved on to his last and most challenging active duty post as the 13th Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency." The tribute gives no dates for the earlier posts.[^5] The notes give Wilson's 1997 position as "Deputy Director DIA/Assistant Joint Chief of Staff J-2" under the DIA director General [[Patrick Hughes]]. A biography published by the [[National Intelligence University Foundation]] states that he served as Director, Defense Intelligence Agency from 1999 to 2002, then as a senior executive of [[Alliant Techsystems]].[^5][^6]
+The Congressional Record of August 1, 2002 carries Senator [[John Warner]]'s tribute: Wilson, born in [[Columbus, Ohio]], was a 1968 graduate of [[Ohio State University]], was commissioned an ensign in March 1969 after [[Officer Candidate School]] at [[Newport, Rhode Island|Newport]], and would retire from active service on August 30, 2002 after thirty-three years. It lists "Vice Director for Intelligence, J2 on the [[Joint Staff]] in the [[Pentagon]]," "Associate [[Director of Central Intelligence]] for Military Support," and "Director for Intelligence, J2 on the Joint Staff," and records that "In July 1999, Admiral Wilson moved on to his last and most challenging active duty post as the 13th Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency." The tribute gives no dates for the earlier posts.[^5] The notes give Wilson's 1997 position as "Deputy Director DIA/Assistant Joint Chief of Staff J-2" under the DIA director General [[Patrick Hughes]]. A biography published by the [[National Intelligence University Foundation]] states that he served as Director, Defense Intelligence Agency from 1999 to 2002, then as a senior executive of [[Alliant Techsystems]].[^5][^6]
 
 ### The earlier versions
 
@@ -58,6 +63,18 @@ A letter of April 25, 2002 from "[[Will Miller]]" of [[Belleair Bluffs, Florida]
 
 The [[Department of Defense]]'s [[All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office]] wrote in February 2024 that the executives of the companies named by interviewees "denied on the record" any recovery or reverse engineering. The text of the report does not mention Wilson, Davis or the notes.[^8]
 
+### Elizondo's account
+
+[[Luis Elizondo]] wrote in 2024 that he met [[Eric Davis]], "an astrophysicist with high-level national security clearances" who "worked with Hal as a contractor for the program," "much later" than his first meetings with [[Hal Puthoff]] at the [[Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program]], that he was told Davis "even provided the Presidential Daily Briefing," and that Davis "has become best known in UAP circles as the alleged author of the legendary Wilson/Davis memo."[^9] Elizondo's version of its origin is that "in the late 1990s" Davis "met and chatted up" Vice Admiral [[Thomas R. Wilson]], whom he describes as Director of Intelligence (J2) for the [[Joint Staff]], and wrote "a thirteen-page summary" of the talk, which he "confidentially shared" with a small group; that Puthoff and Davis gave a copy to the astronaut [[Edgar Mitchell]]; and that after Mitchell's death "his safe was opened and the memo was found and circulated publicly by his estate."[^9] A footnote in the book lists Wilson's other posts as Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Military Support, Vice Director of Intelligence for the Joint Staff and Director of Intelligence for [[United States Atlantic Command]], and states that he later became the thirteenth Director of the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]].[^9] The leaked document is headed "EWD NOTES 10/16/02" and runs to fifteen pages (see above and below); Elizondo gives the length as thirteen pages and the period as the late 1990s.
+
+Elizondo wrote that Wilson, "curious about certain black program line items in the budgets that crossed his desk," obtained a meeting with "representatives of a certain aerospace corporation" and "their attorney," learned that the contractor belonged to a program for "retrieving and reverse-engineering crashed advanced vehicles of unknown origin," and was told by the attorney that continued questions "could get him fired and cause him to lose his pension"; that the admiral "backed down," confided the encounter to Davis and "never spoke of it again, even after the memo leaked."[^9] He wrote that he learned the larger program "is referred to as the Legacy Program," involving "various elements of the US government and US defense contractors," and described the memo as "terrifying on many levels" because, in his words, materials held by contractors "become private property" after the officials who knew of them retire or die.[^9] Wilson's own statements to the reporter [[Billy Cox]] in 2008 ("Never") and in 2020 ("It's all fiction") are quoted above.
+
+Elizondo wrote that Davis afterward briefed Department of Defense agencies and staff members of the [[Senate Armed Services Committee]] and the [[Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]], and attended "several senior-level meetings, to which I was invited, with various branches of the US military," at which Davis "detailed the Legacy Program's long-running efforts involving UAP"; he wrote that Davis told a [[New York Times]] reporter in 2020 that the government possessed "off-world vehicles not made on this earth."[^9] He wrote that the memo "would finally gain more attention from the media and the public" in the spring of 2022 when it "was submitted into the Congressional Record" during public hearings, and, in a later chapter, that at the hearing of May 2022, which he says lasted ninety minutes, "Congressman Mike Gallagher introduced the Wilson/Davis memo, mentioned earlier, into the Congressional Record on national television."[^9][^11] The book's appendix of web references lists the memo at a congress.gov file, https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/114761/documents/HHRG-117-IG05-20220517-SD001.pdf.[^12]
+
+### The congress.gov file
+
+The file named in the book's appendix opens on congress.gov as a 15-page scan whose first page is headed "EWD NOTES" and "10/16/02," followed by "Eric Davis Meeting with Adm. Wilson," and whose opening lines match the Black Vault copy described above. The URL follows the congress.gov pattern for documents in a committee hearing record (meeting 114761, hearing identifier HHRG-117-IG05, dated May 17, 2022, item SD001), and the committee notice listed in the Daily Digest for that date is the hearing "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena." The file is therefore a hearing-record exhibit, and the full-text search of the Congressional Record described above is of a different publication.[^10]
+
 ### Footnotes
 
 [^1]: Elizondo, Luis. *Imminent*. William Morrow, 2024.
@@ -68,3 +85,7 @@ The [[Department of Defense]]'s [[All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office]] wrote i
 [^6]: "Vice Admiral Thomas R. Wilson, USN (Ret)," National Intelligence University Foundation biography, https://niuf.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/WilsonBio.pdf
 [^7]: Greenewald, "The 'Admiral Wilson Leak,'" sections reproducing the Greer lecture transcript of September 12, 2001, the Larry King Live broadcast of July 4, 2008, Billy Cox's reports of August 2008 and June 2020 in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, and statements submitted by Wilson, Puthoff and Greer, at the URL above. The Cox articles themselves were not opened.
 [^8]: Department of Defense, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, Volume I, February 2024, p. 8, https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-CLEARED-508-COMPLIANT-HRRV1-08-MAR-2024-FINAL.PDF
+[^9]: Luis Elizondo, *Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs* (New York: William Morrow, 2024), pp. 41 to 45 (Davis and the memo, indexed at pp. 42 to 44; the footnote on Wilson's posts is at p. 42). Page numbers throughout this page are those of the printed index where it lists the passage; the digital copy read carries no pagination, so other pages are interpolated from index entries and may be off by one.
+[^10]: House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing record, May 17, 2022, item SD001, https://www.congress.gov/117/meeting/house/114761/documents/HHRG-117-IG05-20220517-SD001.pdf (downloaded October 3, 2026; 15 pages, scanned images; page 1 read directly). The submitter of the item is not stated in the file. Cross-reference: Daily Digest, Congressional Record, May 17, 2022, p. D542, as cited in note 2.
+[^11]: Elizondo, *Imminent*, p. 236 (the May 2022 hearing and Gallagher, indexed at p. 236; the same page gives Elizondo's account of the Defense Department witnesses reporting more than 400 logged cases and of Ronald Moultrie's testimony that "Other than AATIP and Blue Book, no"; the book prints Moultrie's name as "Moultrue").
+[^12]: Elizondo, *Imminent*, appendix of web references, entry beginning "To read the Wilson/Davis memo, go to" (pages not numbered in the digital copy).