Leon Davidson
| Leon Davidson | |
| Born | October 18, 1922 |
|---|---|
| Died | January 1, 2007, White Plains, New York |
| Nationality | American |
| Category | Researcher |
| Roles | Chemical engineer; Manhattan Project and Los Alamos engineer; UFO researcher |
| Notable claim | Argued many UFO and contactee events were CIA or Air Force operations (“ECM+CIA=UFO”) |
| Status | Historical |
| Historical | |
Leon Davidson (1922–2007) earned three chemical engineering degrees from Columbia University, worked on the Manhattan Project and as an engineering design supervisor at Los Alamos, and later held technology posts with the Atomic Energy Commission, the Department of Defense and companies including IBM and Western Union.[1]
In the 1950s he became a persistent UFO researcher. He pressed Congress and the Air Force to release Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 and published his own analysis of it. In a 1959 Saucer News article titled “ECM+CIA=UFO,” he argued that sightings such as the 1952 Washington, D.C. radar returns were electronic countermeasure tests, and that contactee stories (like George Adamski’s) were CIA psychological operations.[1]
PURSUE Release 03 included a 1958 CIA memorandum about a phone call in which Davidson raised concerns about a destroyed “space message and its transmitter.”[2]
Assessment
Davidson rejected the extraterrestrial hypothesis. His theory that intelligence agencies exploited UFO beliefs anticipated later documented cases of disinformation (such as AFOSI’s 1980s involvement with Paul Bennewitz) and is a forerunner of the “mirage men” view. Its specific claims about 1950s CIA operations remain unproven.
See also
Further reading
- Mark Pilkington (2010). Mirage Men (Amazon)
- Leon Davidson (1956). Flying Saucers: An Analysis of the Air Force Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14 (Amazon)
References
- ^ Wikipedia, “Leon Davidson” (accessed Oct. 2026).
- ^ U.S. Department of War (2026). PURSUE Release 03, CIA-UAP-004.