A high-ranking retired US Air Force Major General has been missing since February, when he abruptly left his Albuquerque (New Mexico) home at 11 am on foot, without his phone or leaving behind a note. His disappearance prompted a special ‘silver alert’ from the local Sheriff department due to an unspecified medical issue, and because of his past military prominence the FBI has also become involved in the search.
The reason this particular news has triggered the alarm sirens of UFO conspiracists is because the General — William Neil McCasland, 68 — was prominently featured in the email exchanges between former White House chief of staff John Podesta and To the Stars founder Tom DeLonge, which were stolen by Wikileaks hackers during the 2016 presidential campaign between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. In the emails which DeLonge wrote to Podesta (which the then-manager of Hillary’s campaign never bothered to reply to) , the rock musician and UFO entrepreneur identified McCasland as his ‘number one advisor’, and offered to arrange a meeting between the two.
McCasland has an MIT doctorate in astronautical engineering, and during his time at the Air Force he directed a multi-billion dollar R&D budget and was head of the research laboratory at the notorious Wright-Patterson base, where some ufologists have long suspected the purported debris from the Roswell incident in 1947 was taken for study. The ‘foreign technology division’ of that research facility, however, had actually more to do with analyzing pieces from Soviet MIG jet fighters during the Cold War, than ‘metamaterials’ retrieved from a crashed flying saucer.
Wright-Patterson was also the base where the Air Force kept the office for their infamous Project Blue Book, until it was cancelled in 1969 thanks to the recommendation of the Condon committee, which at the time concluded the UFO phenomenon offered no scientific merit for further study — a conclusion which was criticized not only by civilian UFO organizations like NICAP or APRO, but even by some members of the Condon group who accused him of scientific bias.
In the latest volume of his published journals (Forbidden Science Vol. 6, Scattered Castles) world-renowned UFO researcher Jacques Vallée mentions McCasland four times: the first entry is from May 20th 2016 and recounts his first meeting with DeLonge in Las Vegas (which was organized by UFO journalist George Knapp).
At the meeting, DeLonge told Vallée he was directed by a NASA official — Pete Worden, who Jacques knew due to his venture capital job — to contact a “top level guy.” Even though at first Tom wanted to play cool and withheld the Air Force general’s name, by the end of the meeting — perhaps as a way to impress the seasoned researcher, whom he was obviously trying to ‘recruit’ for his future To the Stars enterprise —he showed Jacques McCasland’s photo on his phone, and said he was one of the ‘high-level’ contacts who were pushing him to fulfil some role as a PR spokesperson for the Pentagon’s ‘black’ programs.
“[…]They all want me to tell the story, but when I push them they only answer, ‘We found a lifeform’. So…”
Forbidden Science 6
So… if we take DeLonge’s claims at face value (something I would personally be hesitant to do) we are left with the impression that McCasland might have been among the ‘advisors’ that started to feed him rather far-fetched ideas which later influenced the narratives he started to spread with his Sekret Machines book series he co-wrote with esotericist Peter Levenda. Things that even regular ufologists who believe in the Roswell crash would be hesitant to endorse; like memes about Nazi super-secret weapons (which contributed to Vallée’s decision not to get involved with TTSA) or even theological speculations in which the ancient gods of the Greek pantheon would have been aliens interfering with humanity’s development (!) in some twisted cosmic game.
Could this hint perhaps at McCasland’s state of mind, and help explain his current disappearance? The ‘silver alert’ issued by the authorities when he was reported missing refers to senior citizens who display a “deterioration of intellectual faculties”, but in a Facebook post his wife Susan denied he suffered from dementia, nor that he knew anything about “the ET bodies and debris from the Roswell crash stored at Wright-Patt” which would merit his abduction. Surely this would do little to stomp out the conspiracies.
What we do know for certain is that after the email leaks General McCasland backed away and never met with Podesta, and he never confirmed nor denied publicly his involvement with DeLonge, or any type of government UFO R&D program — even though on his entry for July 14th 2017, Vallée writes McCasland was going to become one of To the Stars’ ‘distinguished advisors’ alongside other prominent figures, like Rob Weiss (Exec. VP, Advanced Development, Lockheed), Steve Justice (Director of Advanced Systems, Lockheed), Eric Schrock (Director of Air Vehicles, Lockheed) and Major General Mike McCarey (ex-Space Command).
A search on the archived captures of the now-defunct To the Stars website shows no mention of McCasland’s name among their team of consultants. Nor is there any official statement with regards to his disappearance at their current page, which is now more an online apparel store than an organization dedicated to the study of UFOs.
We will keep you informed as the story develops.
