L. Ron Hubbard was serving in naval intelligence during the Second World War when he became Jack Parsons’s partner in the so-called Babalon Working.1 According to Dark Mission, a hand-written memo obtained under the Freedom of Information Act indicates that Parsons’ occult activities came under scrutiny from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Office of Naval Intelligence as early as 1940.2 The same source states that an FBI memo from the period indicates the Office of Naval Intelligence had an informant inside the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) / Federation of American Scientists group.3 Richard C. Hoagland has said he considers it plausible that Hubbard was an Office of Naval Intelligence informant sent to infiltrate and destabilise the OTO and Federation of American Scientists, after reviewing documentation supplied by the Church of Scientology.4
According to Jacques Vallée, Mr. Talman and Colonel Friend met three days after an initial contact, in the presence of six men from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a representative of the Office of Naval Intelligence, to review the case.5
ONI’s most substantial documented role concerns the 2004 USS Nimitz UAP encounter involving the carrier USS Nimitz (CVN-68). In October 2019, researcher Christian Lambright filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the US Navy’s Office of Naval Intelligence seeking records relating to the encounter.6 According to In Plain Sight, an account by Paco Chierici of viewing a classified Office of Naval Intelligence report confirmed that the ONI had conducted its own investigation into the encounter.7 The same source reports that, as of 2020-01-08, the Office of Naval Intelligence had admitted to holding “Top Secret” records and a “Secret” video relating to the incident.8
In 2019, the Pentagon, including the Office of Naval Intelligence, gave US Senators a classified briefing on unidentified aerial vehicle (UAV) sightings, with members of key United States Congress oversight committees making repeated requests for further information throughout the year.9 Christopher K. Mellon served as an unpaid consultant to the Office of Naval Intelligence in 2017, after retiring from full-time national security work in the Pentagon and Congress.10 Jay Stratton, formerly of the US public service’s Senior Executive Service, was highly decorated over 32 years of service across different arms of the US military, work that culminated at the Office of Naval Intelligence.11
In testimony to Congress, David Grusch stated that the Central Intelligence Agency, the Office of Naval Intelligence and a number of Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC)s have been involved in the analysis of recovered Unidentified Aerial Phenomena material connected to the reverse engineering of recovered craft of non-human origin over the decades.12