Oke Shannon

Oke Shannon is a former officer of the United States Navy (USN) who later worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and who has known Thomas Wilson for years, dating back to that period of Navy service, according to notes Eric Davis made of a meeting with Wilson on 2002-10-16.¹ According to Wilson, Shannon spent two hours on the telephone attempting to convince him to speak with Davis about matters Shannon had earlier discussed with Willard Miller in April and June 1997.² Wilson said those discussions with Miller had touched on a story in The Boston Globe by journalist Leslie Kean, the UFO topic more broadly, claims of UFO crash retrieval of craft and bodies, and a group resembling Majestic 12 (MJ-12).³

Wilson and Shannon spoke by telephone in the autumn of 1999.⁴ Before agreeing to meet Davis, Wilson gave the matter serious thought, recalling that 1999 call and how strongly Shannon had supported Davis, with good arguments in his favour.⁵ In agreeing to talk to Davis, Wilson was taking a risk, trusting Shannon’s word.⁶ According to Wilson, Shannon vouched for Davis as a team player who would keep his mouth shut, had no media connections, would obey all restrictions, was not in government and held no clearances, but had an excellent pedigree and excellent professional and personal references.⁷

Wilson also said Shannon briefed him on the whole “BDM” matter, including Shannon’s own role in it and who had attended, with reference to a book by Blum.⁸ Wilson said Shannon spent ten minutes talking to him about the Remote Viewing (RV) program, a subject Wilson said he knew something of.⁹ Wilson also said Shannon told him about a person referred to as “JA”, whom Shannon did not trust and called a liar.¹⁰ Davis, for his part, noted that the National Institute for Discovery Science was not mentioned in the discussion of his background, and that Shannon had previously mentioned the National Institute for Discovery Science, “JA”, and Davis together only in 1999.¹¹ Wilson further said Shannon had argued that Davis would not talk to the press or to UFO groups, would not speak to Miller, Steven Greer, or related figures, and had no vested interest in publicity, money, fame, or notoriety.¹²

Wilson and Shannon had intended to meet Davis together, face to face, but Shannon’s health problems prevented it.¹³ By this point, Shannon had become difficult to contact, was in and out of hospital, and was extremely sensitive to stress and heart sick.¹⁴ When Wilson tried telephoning Shannon, a woman named Linda took messages that went unreturned, as she did not want to add to Shannon’s burden.¹⁵ Wilson told Shannon it was a bad time and that he was too busy to speak with Davis.¹⁶

Shannon later became a peripheral figure in the controversy surrounding The Admiral Wilson Memo, a document purporting to record an account by Wilson of Special Access Program (SAP) briefings on UFOs. In June 2020, Wilson stated that many of the people named in the memo as people he had interacted with, including Shannon and Mike Crawford, were completely unknown to him, as were the conversations it described him having with senior United States Department of Defense (DoD) officials.¹⁷ According to the book “In Plain Sight” (2021), Shannon gave the impression, in an interview with journalist Billy Cox, that he actually knew Wilson well.¹⁸ Shannon told Cox he did not know the provenance of the memo and could not say whether it was genuine, but said he knew both Wilson and Davis, described Wilson as an honourable man, and said that if the document had embarrassed Wilson, he was sorry.¹⁹ Shannon did not deny to Cox that he had facilitated a meeting between Wilson and Davis, or that such a meeting had taken place.²⁰