Thomas Crosson served as a spokesman for the Department of Defense (DoD) and is publicly associated with the official government response to reporting on the Pentagon Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) UFO Program, 2007–2017. In December 2017, following investigative reporting that revealed the programme’s existence, Crosson provided a written statement explaining why the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) had been discontinued, stating that “it was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding, and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change."1
The knowledge graph also associates this node with Admiral Thomas Wilson, a senior US military intelligence officer whose statements and denials are central to the controversy surrounding the Wilson Davis Memo. Admiral Wilson confirmed to journalist Richard Dolan that he did attend the 1997 Pentagon UAP Briefing, at which Steven Greer and Edgar Mitchell were present, but characterised much of what Greer described as “poppycock."2 In a written reply, Wilson acknowledged the 1997 meeting was a briefing he accepted partly because Mitchell was a credible astronaut and out of “mild” curiosity, and stated explicitly that he did not acknowledge or suggest that UAP special access programs existed, and had never had knowledge of such programmes.3,4
Regarding the Wilson Davis Las Vegas Meeting 2002 described in the Wilson Davis Memo, Wilson issued a detailed denial in a letter dated 30 June 2020 to journalist Ross Coulthart.10 In that letter he stated that Eric Davis’s notes contain “somewhat detailed accounts of alleged efforts by me to get access to Special Access Programs,” but that he “participated in no such meetings on these subjects,” never formally or informally requested such access, was never denied access, and was never threatened with career consequences for seeking it.7 Wilson further stated that individuals named in the memo — including Oke Shannon among others — were “completely unknown” to him,5 and that any conversations he purportedly had with senior Department of Defense (DoD) officials regarding Special Access Programs related to UFOs were “pure fiction."6
In the same June 2020 letter, Wilson addressed the specific claim that he had met Eric Davis in Las Vegas in October 2002. He stated that the only time he had been in Las Vegas was during a Carrier Air Wing Three deployment to Nellis Air Force Base in 1979 or 1980, and that in October 2002 he was on terminal leave at an isolated camp in Maine before commencing employment with Alliant Technosystems in November of that year.8 The denial was issued in the context of renewed public attention to the Wilson Davis Memo, a document that purports to record Wilson’s private admissions concerning Non-Human Craft Recovery Programs.9