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John B. Alexander

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This article is about the American military officer. For the pioneer Oregon newspaper publisher, born 1830, see The Register-Guard.
John B. Alexander
Col. Alexander
Born1937
Occupation(s)Author and UFO researcher
Websitejohnbalexander.com

John B. Alexander (born 1937) is a retired United States Army colonel. An infantry officer for much of his career, he is best known as a leading advocate for the development of non-lethal weapons and of military applications of the paranormal. He has written and lectured on the reality of UFOs. He characterizes his career as having "evolved from hard-core mercenary to thanatologist". Alexander figures prominently in journalist Jon Ronson's book The Men Who Stare At Goats (2004), and its related Channel 4 documentaries, which examine the subject of New Age ideas influencing the U.S. military.[1]

Biography

Alexander was born in New York in 1937. He enlisted in the Army as a private in 1956, ultimately retiring as a colonel in 1988. A "mustang," Alexander was selected to attend Officer Candidate School as a sergeant first class. While on active duty, he received degrees from the University of Nebraska (B.G.S. with a concentration in sociology, 1971), Pepperdine University (M.A. in education, 1975) and Walden University (Ph.D. in education, 1980).

His assignments include: Commander, Army Special Forces Teams, US Army, Thailand, Vietnam, 1966–69; Chief of Human Resources Division, US Army, Ft. McPherson, GA, 1977–79; Inspector General, Department of Army, Washington, 1980–82; Chief of Human Technology, Army Intelligence Command, US Army, Arlington, VA 1982-83; Manager of Tech. Integration, Army Materiel Command, US Army, Alexandria, VA, 1983–85; Director, Advanced Concepts US Army Lab. Command, Aldelphi, MD 1985-88.[2][3][4]

Alexander describes his assignment in 1971 as an infantry officer at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, during which time he went diving in the Bimini Islands in search of the lost continent of Atlantis. During his career in the army he showed exceptional interest in esoteric techniques explored by Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon in his First Earth Battalion manual. An example is neuro-linguistic programming, with which he hoped to create "Jedi warriors" (according to his own account in his 1990 book The Warrior's Edge). He has published another book, UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities (ISBN 978-0-312-64834-3).

From 1982 to 1983, Alexander directly reported to Major General Albert Stubblebine as a self-described "freelance colonel" while Stubblebine redesigned the U.S. Army intelligence architecture to incorporate paranormal and New Age-influenced techniques (including Channon's research and remote viewing) during his time as commanding general of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command; reportedly, Alexander was one of Stubblebine's closest colleagues.[5]

In 1985, Alexander founded the Advanced Theoretical Physics Project, an informal cadre of "government officials" (including "people from the Army, Navy, and Air Force, plus several from the defense aerospace industries and some members from the Intelligence Community") who "took it upon themselves to find out whether there was a secret federal UFO project." Although Alexander restricted membership in the group to invitees with a demonstrable interest in the phenomenon and a minimum security clearance of Top Secret-SCI at SI-TK in the hope that "those involved [in a black program on UFOs] would probably be willing to work with a group that had appropriate clearances and could help disseminate information," the group ultimately concluded that "there was no program" and that information collection among the military, Intelligence Community and other federal agencies "was pretty much ad hoc."[6]

Alexander received a National Award for Volunteerism from President Ronald Reagan in 1987 and the Aerospace Laureate Award from Aviation Week in 1993 and 1994.

Following his retirement from the Army, Alexander served for several years as Program Manager for Non-Lethal Defense at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In this capacity, he conducted non-lethal warfare briefings at the highest levels of government, including the Executive Office of the President, the United States National Security Council, members of Congress, the Director of Central Intelligence and senior Department of Defense officials. In 2003, he served as a mentor to senior officials in the Afghan Ministry of Defense through the Office of Military Cooperation–Afghanistan. Beginning in 2005 and continuing for nearly a decade thereafter, he was a Senior Fellow in the Department of Strategic Studies at the Joint Special Operations University; during this period, the JSOU Press published several of his monographs on national security matters.

The Albuquerque Journal reported in March 1993 that "last year, Alexander organized a national conference devoted to researching 'reports of ritual abuse, near-death experiences, human contacts with extraterrestrial aliens and other so-called anomalous experiences.' " The Australian magazine Nexus reported that in 1971, Alexander 'was diving in the Bimini Islands looking for the lost continent of Atlantis. He was an official representative for the Silva mind control organization and a lecturer on pre-cataclysmic civilizations ... [and] he helped perform ESP experiments with dolphins.'"[7]

Alexander lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife Victoria, a fellow UFO researcher.[8]

Works

Alexander is interviewed for the documentary featurette "The Science Behind the Fiction" which appears on the DVD for the 2009 film Push. There he discusses his personal experiences with paranormality within the US military. He claims that the Soviet Typhoon class submarine first became known to American military intelligence by paranormal methods.[9]

See also

References

  1. ^ Ronson, Jon (2004), The Men Who Stare at Goats, pp 49-50.
  2. ^ Mind Games. Weinberger, Sharon. Washington Post. Jan 14, 2007. Retrieved on 2009-05-23.
  3. ^ Guests: Col. John Alexander. Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. Retrieved on 2009-05-23.
  4. ^ Col. John Alexander: How the war on terrorism will be fought. CNN.com. Oct 3, 2001. Retrieved on 2009-05-23.
  5. ^ Porter, Tom (March 1996). Government Research into ESP & Mind Control.
  6. ^ https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/a6488/colonel-john-alexander-plants-ufo-doubts-in-new-book/
  7. ^ Aftergood, Steven (Sep–Oct 1994). "The Soft-Kill Fallacy". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 50 (5): 40.
  8. ^ "Who's Who in America". 1997.
  9. ^ "The Science Behind the Fiction", Push DVD, Summit Entertainment, 2009, Region 1.
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