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Leaked Document Shows 1953 CIA Cover-Up of Holloman Air Force Base Alien Contact

Reality Check with Ross Coulthart · Watergate, the JFK assassination and a UFO secret at the center of it all | Reality Check · June 18, 2026
Reality Check with Ross Coulthart
Reality Check with Ross Coulthart
Watergate, the JFK assassination and a UFO secret at the center of it all | Reality Check
"There was a secret contact meeting, a contact group meeting at Holloman, and that this document confirms it. Dr. Eric Davis has recently spoken about a conversation he had with President Bush Senior, and he says that Bush told him that when he became director of the CIA, he was briefed about a landing at Holloman."
Kaplan presented a newly discovered June 1953 letter from CIA's Richard Drain to the National Security Council ordering all records and film from an 'advanced contact group meeting' at Holloman Air Force Base kept secret. Kaplan stated this corroborates physicist Eric Davis's account that President Bush Sr. told him he was briefed as CIA Director about a meeting at Holloman where uniformed officers met a Nordic-appearing non-human being who emerged from a craft. The document had been held in Tim Cooper's archive and never previously disclosed.

About this episode

Host Ross Coulthart interviewed Jonathan Kaplan KC, a senior British barrister with over 50 years' experience in high-profile fraud and intelligence cases, about his newly published book on UFOs and the Majestic 12 documents. Kaplan, who served on the editorial board of Flying Saucer Review and personally delivered copies to Prince Philip's equerry at Buckingham Palace, applied his forensic legal skills to authenticate leaked government UFO documents. The conversation centered on previously undisclosed Majestic 12 documents retrieved from the late Timothy Cooper's archive, including a July 1949 Blair House meeting memo showing Truman and Eisenhower discussing atomic weapons production for potential space war against alien craft, and a 1953 CIA letter ordering secrecy around an alleged alien contact meeting at Holloman Air Force Base. Kaplan presented evidence he believes links the JFK assassination directly to Kennedy's intention to disclose UFO secrets, citing CIA contractor Frank Sturgis's alleged confession to NYPD detective Jim Rothstein that he was a grassy knoll gunman, and Howard Hunt's deathbed statement that Kennedy was killed 'because he was about to reveal the alien presence.' Kaplan authenticated documents through corroboration with presidential diaries, Atomic Energy Commission records, and contemporary sources unavailable when documents first surfaced in the 1980s. He disclosed Prince Philip's active UFO interest and Sir Peter Townsley's witness interviews at Buckingham Palace, including Townsley's account of meeting a mind-reading being seeking introduction to the Duke. Kaplan expressed skepticism about imminent disclosure under Trump, arguing intelligence agencies will never admit to murders, crashed craft retrievals, or contact with non-human intelligence, settling instead for acknowledging anomalous phenomena only.

Key takeaways

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