Jeffrey T Richelson
Jeffrey T. Richelson (1949–2017) was an American author and senior fellow at the National Security Archive at George Washington University, widely regarded as one of the foremost historians of the US intelligence community. His prolific body of work includes authoritative books on the structure, operations, and programs of American intelligence agencies, many based on extensive use of Freedom of Information Act requests and declassified documents.
| Role | Author; intelligence community historian |
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Key Works
- The US Intelligence Community — A comprehensive reference work on the organization and operations of American intelligence agencies, cited by UAP Gerb as a source of valuable information on the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office (NURO)
- Defusing Armageddon: Inside NEST, America's Secret Nuclear Bomb Squad — A detailed account of the Nuclear Emergency Support Team, providing operational details including deployment capabilities, vehicle fleets, laboratory partnerships, and response protocols that proved instrumental in reconstructing the 1997 Peru UFO Crash Incident
Relevance to UAP Research
Richelson's work on NEST, though not focused on UAP, provides critical factual infrastructure for understanding the Department of Energy's emergency response capabilities. Details from Defusing Armageddon — including NEST's authority to commandeer DoD aircraft, its Cessna Citation 2 jet fleet (464 mph max speed), its 24/7 Joint Technical Operations team established in February 1997, and the 1996 Mars 96 probe incident in which NEST considered deployment to Bolivia and Colombia based on Defense Support Program (DSP) satellite intelligence — form key data points in the theoretical reconstruction of how a DOE retrieval team could have reached a crash site in the Peruvian jungle within approximately 8 hours.