Roscoe Hillenkoetter was a Rear Admiral in the US Navy who, by May 1947, was settling into his new post as Director of Central Intelligence in D.C. Washington1, a position that became the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) later that year2. He had previously commanded the battleship USS Missouri3 and was wounded aboard a vessel during the attack on Pearl Harbor at Hawaii Pearl Harbor on 1941-12-074. A major priority for him in his new intelligence role was fixing the failures that had allowed the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor undetected5.
Hillenkoetter later joined the Board of Directors of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP)6, becoming one of three former navy admirals on its board barely a year after leaving the CIA directorship7.
Hillenkoetter said it was imperative that we learn what UFOs are and where they come from8. In 1960, he said it was time for the truth to be brought out in open hearings before Congress9, and he later told Congress that, behind the scenes, high-ranking air force officers were soberly concerned about UFOs, but that official secrecy and ridicule had led many citizens to believe the unknown flying objects were nonsense10. By then a former CIA Director, he pushed for congressional hearings on the UAP issue at a time when the United States Air Force (USAF) was publicly debunking most UAP sightings while privately treating the phenomenon seriously11.
Jacques Vallée has speculated that Hillenkoetter could have been lending credibility to the Martian Conspiracy stratagem by deliberately promoting the extraterrestrial theory of UFOs12. Harry Turner said that many intelligence officers associated with the UFO problem, including Hillenkoetter, had stated that the US government knew UFOs were extraterrestrial but was withholding this fact from the public13.