---
alias:
- Wilson-Davis Memo
- Wilson/Davis document
- EWD Notes 10/16/02
date: 2002
relations:
- fn: 3
  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'
  start: 2002-10-16
  type: subject_of
  with: '[[Thomas R. Wilson]]'
- fn: 10
  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
  start: 2022-05-17
  type: subject_of
  with: '[[House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence]]'
tags:
- Source
updated: 2026-10-03
---

The [Wilson-Davis Memo](/sources/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](/people/eric-davis/) and Vice Admiral Thomas R. Wilson, who was then the Director of the [Defense Intelligence Agency](/organizations/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](/organizations/us-government/) program that was reverse-engineering technology recovered from crashed [Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena](/concepts/unidentified-anomalous-phenomena/) (UAP).[^1]

### The Memo's Content

According to the memo, Admiral Wilson, after discovering references to a UAP reverse-engineering program in budget line items, attempted to gain access to it. He was met with resistance from the program's corporate contractor, whose attorney informed him that he did not have a "need to know" and that further inquiries could result in the loss of his career and pension. The program was described as being focused on retrieving and analyzing advanced vehicles of non-human origin, and it was operating with a level of secrecy that superseded even the authority of the Director of the DIA.[^1]

### Origins and Leak

The memo was written by Eric Davis as a summary of his conversation with Admiral Wilson. It was shared confidentially with a small group of colleagues, including [Hal Puthoff](/people/hal-puthoff/). A copy was given to astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell, a longtime advocate for UAP transparency. After Dr. Mitchell's death, the memo was discovered in his files and was leaked to the public. [Luis Elizondo](/people/luis-elizondo/)'s book Imminent states that the document was later entered into the Congressional Record during a public hearing on UAP in May 2022.[^1] A search of the full text of the Congressional Record for 2022 through September 2026 found no entry containing the memo, Davis and Wilson; the only May 2022 entry on the subject is the Daily Digest notice of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" of May 17, 2022.[^2]

### 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](/programs/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

The document is fifteen pages headed "EWD NOTES 10/16/02" and "Eric Davis Meeting with Adm. Wilson," attributed to the physicist Eric Davis and recording a conversation with the former Defense Intelligence Agency director Vice Admiral Thomas R. Wilson. John Greenewald of The Black Vault states that the images were uploaded to the image site Imgur on April 19, 2019 and began circulating in the first week of June 2019, that the notes have no provenance, and that Davis, to whom he sent repeated e-mails, has given "no comment" responses to other researchers. The Black Vault's PDF is an optical character recognition scan of page images, and its text layer is partly garbled.[^3]

The first page records the arrangement: "Rich says to go to [EG&G](/organizations/egg/) Special Projects building at Grice and Paradise. 'Meet at 10 A.M.'" Wilson "Arrives with two [Navy](/organizations/us-navy/) officers in uniform," while "he's in suit," "now civilian," a lieutenant and a second officer whose rank the scan renders "Crodr.," with a petty officer driving; the two men "sit in his car in back of EG&G building" and "Talk until 11:20 A.M." In the notes Wilson says that he "left DIA July (2002)," replaced by Admiral Jacoby, that he came to the "test site special area" to wrap up projects he began in 1998 on a trip "set up by NNSA (National Nuclear Security Agency)," and that "Rich & Doug," members of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers whom the notes say Davis knew, telephoned from [Washington](/places/washington-dc/) in September "after Labor Day" about Davis, sent his papers, and "vouched" for him after Wilson had his own office run background checks. The notes give no surname for "Rich" or "Doug" beyond the two organizations; the Skunk Works engineer [Ben Rich](/people/ben-rich/) died in January 1995.[^3][^4]

### 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, 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](/organizations/pentagon/)," "Associate [Director of Central Intelligence](/organizations/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

Greenewald reproduces the transcript of a lecture by Steven Greer at Portland, Oregon on September 12, 2001, in which Greer said that "the head of intelligence Joint Staffs" had "an office not far from the section" of the Pentagon "blasted yesterday," that he and "one of the Apollo astronauts" met "This admiral, Tom Wilson, who was the J2 position," that the admiral said "I have been in plenty of black projects, but when we tried to get into this one" he was told "Sir, you do not have a need to know," and that "Neither did the [CIA](/organizations/central-intelligence-agency/) director, and neither did the President." Edgar Mitchell recounted the story on CNN's Larry King Live on July 4, 2008. The reporter Billy Cox asked Wilson in August 2008, and wrote that Wilson replied "Never" when asked whether he had ever been barred from retrieving classified material.[^7]

In 2020 Wilson told Cox of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune: "It's all fiction. I wouldn't know Eric Davis if he walked in right now"; "I definitely did not sit with him in a car for an hour in [Las Vegas](/places/las-vegas/)"; that the notes say he came with two naval officers and a petty officer driving the car but "I was not even in the Navy then"; and "I haven't been to Las Vegas since 1979, 80." Of a meeting with Mitchell and Greer he said he did not remember the details, that they said "there would be evidence in black programs, and would I be interested in chasing it down," and "I told them I had far too many things to do. I'm not saying there are no such programs because I don't know." Greer told The Black Vault the notes were "substantially correct with only minor errors," and Hal Puthoff declined to comment on authenticity, citing his security accesses.[^7]

### What the notes describe

According to the notes Wilson said that in April to June 1997 he followed advice from General M. Ward and then [William Perry](/people/william-perry/) to search the "records groups" of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, where he found a "special projects record group" within the unacknowledged or waived special access programs; spoke with Paul Kaminski and a Brigadier General Kostelnik; telephoned a program manager at "An aerospace technology contractor," "one of the top ones in US," "the best one of them," with intelligence "In their corporate portfolio"; and that in mid-June he flew to the contractor's facility and met in a conference room in "their secure vault" with a program director, a security director "(NSA-retired, a CI expert)" and a corporate attorney who "Called themselves 'the watch committee.'" They told him he was not on the "bigot list," several pages dated 1990 and updated 1993, naming 400 to 800 workers, "civilians," with a handful of Pentagon names; the program was "not any weapons program ... not any intelligence program," but "a reverse engineering program" with "an intact craft they believed could fly," whose origin the program manager said was "not of this Earth." The notes record that Wilson then took the matter to the Special Access Program Oversight Committee, which sustained the contractor, and that in a second meeting the Senior Review Group chairman told him that if he persisted he would not see "Director DIA promotion," would get "early retirement" or "lose 1 or 2 stars." They also record that Jacques Gansler, Kaminski's successor from December 1997, told Wilson in January 1998: "UFOs are real, so-called 'alien abductions' not real." Wilson would not name the contractor ("Core secret," "can't tell") or the code name.[^3] The page for [Lockheed Skunk Works](/organizations/lockheed-skunk-works/) collects the other statements that place such a program there.

### Other documents in the packet

A letter of April 25, 2002 from "Will Miller" of Belleair Bluffs, Florida to Davis at Warp Drive Metrics, Las Vegas, is paper-clipped to the notes. It offers, for $180 an hour and with "absolutely NO mention or association of my name," to provide "Particulars on a 'special team' involved (as a secondary mission) with recovering crashed 'craft' including, but not limited to, the previously classified F-117 Stealth Fighter" and the "two key officers" of its sponsoring entity; "The name and location of a senior officer who I believe had first-hand knowledge" of "U.S. government alien reproduction vehicles (ARVs) at [Area-51](/places/area-51/)"; the name of a retired flag-rank officer connected to "a significant UFO event on the east coast"; and "A list of civilian government contractors." The notes have Wilson saying Miller "can make good educated guess on who (contractors) has alien hardware."[^3]

### Where the Department of Defense report stands

The [Department of Defense](/organizations/department-of-defense/)'s [All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office](/organizations/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](/people/luis-elizondo/) wrote in 2024 that he met [Eric Davis](/people/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](/people/hal-puthoff/) at the [Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program](/programs/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](/people/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](/organizations/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](/organizations/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](/organizations/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]

[^1]: Elizondo, Luis. *Imminent*. William Morrow, 2024.
[^2]: United States Congress, Daily Digest, "House Committee Meetings," Congressional Record, May 17, 2022, p. D542, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2022-05-17/html/CREC-2022-05-17-pt1-PgD542.htm (govinfo full-text search of the Congressional Record, 2022 to September 2026, for the memo, Wilson and Davis returned no entry).
[^3]: "EWD NOTES 10/16/02, Eric Davis Meeting with Adm. Wilson," 15 pp., https://documents2.theblackvault.com/casefiles/wilsonleak.pdf (read as OCR text; quotations are from the legible passages and may carry OCR errors); John Greenewald, "The 'Admiral Wilson Leak' - 'Core Secrets' Document - An Analysis," The Black Vault, December 13, 2020 (updated September 7, 2021), https://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/the-admiral-wilson-leak-an-analysis/
[^4]: Peter W. Merlin, "Taking E.T. Home: Birth of a Modern Myth," SUNlite 5, no. 6 (November-December 2013), p. 16 (Rich "until shortly before his death from cancer in January 1995"), https://web.archive.org/web/20150321193509/home.comcast.net/~tprinty/UFO/SUNlite5_6.pdf
[^5]: "Tribute to VADM Thomas R. Wilson, USN," Congressional Record 148, no. 108 (August 1, 2002), pp. S7890 to S7891, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-2002-08-01/html/CREC-2002-08-01-pt2-PgS7890-3.htm
[^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.
[^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).