Missing UFO Scientist Tried to Escape Secret Pentagon Program Days Before Vanishing Without a Trace, Bombshell Memo Claims

A missing U.S. Air Force general linked to the military's alleged research on UFOs was reportedly trying to quit his job at a government research lab before he mysteriously vanished, RadarOnline.com has learned.

Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland vanished from a hiking trail in Albuquerque on February 27, which experts say could be a "grave national security crisis."

According to documents first uncovered by historian Sara Bondink, the general's wife, Susan Wilkerson, told authorities before disappearing, the 68-year-old was suffering from a severe mental decline and was trying to resign from several of the secret projects he was working on.

At the time, McCasland was involved in high-level research for the Department of War, focusing on national security and advanced technology.

Just days before he vanished, according to a police report, McCasland flew by himself to Washington DC to officially resign from the Riverside Research facility, a nonprofit that provides scientific research, engineering, and advisory services on advanced technology projects.

The organization has contracts with the Pentagon, the US intelligence community, and the Air Force, which are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Despite his wife's claims of potential mental decline, government officials have revealed that McCasland was still being looked at as a key witness in the ongoing effort to declassify decades-old secrets related to UFOs and extraterrestrials.

Sources told Radar there are fears he may have been silenced to protect secrets the government is keeping – or that he was made to disappear by the very extraterrestrials he has spent a career documenting.

The Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office issued a Silver Alert and cited the general had unspecified "medical issues," even though sources described him as fit and sharp as a tack.

UFO buffs like Reality Check podcaster Ross Coulthart subsequently sounded the alarm over McCasland's vexing disappearance.

"The timing is screechingly relevant," Coulthart said.

He also noted the major general, who holds a doctorate degree in astronautical engineering from MIT, has some of America's "most sensitive secrets... in his head."

Meanwhile, sources said the FBI is investigating the disappearance of the officer, who during his 47-year career oversaw some of the Air Force's most secret programs, including research for the Office of Special Projects – the shadowy unit charged with securing and protecting sensitive aerospace technologies.

The general also commanded the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), a multibillion-dollar weapons program dedicated to cutting-edge technologies, as well as Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside Dayton, Ohio, where the AFRL is headquartered and where Project Blue Book – the Air Force's secret, 17-year investigation of UFOs – was based from 1952 to 1969.

UFO experts believe the wreckage from a 1947 UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico, was taken to Wright-Patterson for reverse engineering.

McCasland's disappearance is just one of at least 10 scientists and military leaders with links to highly classified information who have either disappeared or died under mysterious circumstances.

But his vanishing may be the most concerning. McCasland was a researcher for the Office of Special Projects, known for being in charge of securing sensitive aerospace technologies.

Or, as Tennessee Rep. Tim Burchett previously put it, "I've been told by several sources that he was the gatekeeper for the UFO stuff."