Jacques Gansler
Jacques S. Gansler served as Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology under President Bill Clinton. According to the Wilson-Davis Memo, Gansler was read into the crash retrieval and reverse engineering program that Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson had been denied access to, and provided Wilson with a cryptic acknowledgment of UFO reality in January 1998.
| Role | Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology |
|---|
Involvement in the Wilson Affair
According to the Wilson-Davis memo, in the period from June to December 1997—after Wilson's meeting with the Watch Committee and his complaint to the SAPOC senior review group—Paul Kaminski and Brigadier General Ward were replaced at OUSD(AT) by Jacques Gansler.
When Wilson spoke to Gansler in January 1998, he learned that Gansler had been read into the program by someone. Gansler told Wilson: "UFOs are real, so-called alien abductions not real," and would speak no more on the topic.
This statement is notable for several reasons:
- It suggests Gansler had direct knowledge of recovered UFO craft or materials
- He distinguished between physical UFO craft (real) and alien abduction claims (not real)
- He was willing to acknowledge UFO reality to Wilson but refused further discussion
- His position as Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology gave him oversight of defense contractor programs, consistent with the memo's claim that the crash retrieval program was housed within a contractor