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Espionage

Former NSA and CIA Contractor Reveals Decades of Technical Intelligence Gathering Abroad

Danny Jones Podcast · #398 - DARPA Scientist: Military Abductions, UFO Super Users & Satan | Bob McGwier · May 22, 2026
Former NSA and CIA Contractor Reveals Decades of Technical Intelligence Gathering Abroad
Danny Jones Podcast
Danny Jones Podcast
#398 - DARPA Scientist: Military Abductions, UFO Super Users & Satan | Bob McGwier
"I was doing technical intelligence gathering at the pointy edge of the sword all over the world for 10 years. And Director Tenet gave me the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion for that work."
Bob McGwier disclosed his role conducting classified technical intelligence operations in 72 countries from 1990 to 2010, working for the NSA, CIA, and a joint activity called SCS. He revealed he operated overseas gathering human and signals intelligence, earning the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion from CIA Director Tenet. His most intense operation ran from October 2001 to April 2002, after which he needed a break, calling it 'not nice.'

About this episode

In this nearly five-hour conversation, host Danny Jones interviews Dr. Bob McGwier, a former NSA and CIA technical intelligence contractor who spent decades conducting classified operations in 72 countries and now serves as founder of satellite intelligence company Hawkeye 360. McGwier reveals he worked on some of the intelligence community's most sensitive programs from 1990 to 2010, earning the Intelligence Community Seal Medallion from CIA Director Tenet. The conversation takes a dramatic turn as McGwier describes two separate encounters with unidentified objects while aboard U.S. Navy vessels: a 'fast walker' moving faster than sound underwater near the USS Hampton in 1997, and a massive glowing craft larger than the 450-foot USS Blue Ridge that blocked rain during a 2008 typhoon in the Sea of Japan. McGwier's involvement with the UAP subject deepened in 2020 after visiting experiencer Chris Bledsoe, where he witnessed large orbs responding to mental commands and experienced what he describes as a miraculous healing—his cardiologist found his heart, previously damaged by four heart attacks and a quadruple bypass, was now 100% functional. The episode explores McGwier's belief that government insiders wage war over disclosure, his revelation that Carl Sagan was a cleared intelligence contractor despite his public persona, and his conviction that a non-human intelligence has been involved in human evolution and potentially in his own life trajectory. McGwier describes the stovepiped nature of compartmentalized programs, discusses missing Air Force scientist General Thomas McCaslin's likely fate under extreme non-disclosure protocols, and shares his work founding Hawkeye 360, a satellite company now valued at over $1.5 billion that he originally designed to detect alien implants in human bodies. He closes by describing his own miraculous recovery from severe depression using ketamine therapy and his belief that remote viewing, telepathy, and consciousness-based phenomena are real and terrify the government because they would make secrets impossible to keep.

Key takeaways

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