Dean
Member
Harald Malmgren, PhD (July 13, 1935-February 13, 2025) had a respectable career as an economist. During the Nixon and Ford administrations he had great influence in the specialized area of trade policy, and served as Deputy Special Representative for Trade Negotiations, with the rank of "ambassador." After that he worked for decades as a consultant, lobbyist, expert for various think tanks, writer on economic issues, and professor/instructor at universities.
However, during the 21st century Malmgren progressively constructed an alternative history for himself, in which he played key roles in many matters of world-shaking import. In this version of his life, he was "a senior advisor to four presidents" (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford), conducting unrecorded secret missions for several of them. He was a behind-the-scenes intergenerational, international powerbroker. He was the repository of deep secrets pertaining to extraterrestrial visitation and government possession of nonhuman technology. Indeed, according to popular YouTuber Jesse Michels, whose 3.8-hour video of Malmgren's last interview ("I Touched a UFO!") has drawn about 700,000 views in five weeks, "Harald is a hero who saved the world (and more than once)."
Malmgren claimed that in 1962 he was personally recruited by National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, was immediately made a key personal aide to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and was designated by McNamara as the secretary's personal liaison to the National Security Council. Malmgren said as McNamara's personal agent, he directly faced off against USAF Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay at a critical moment of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when LeMay wanted to launch a punitive nuclear strike on sites in the Soviet Union-- an intervention that Malmgren promoters insist prevented a nuclear catastrophe. Malmgren said that in 1962 he held a "Q" clearance from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and that thus empowered, he personally investigated for President Kennedy a nonhuman UFO knocked down by a U.S. nuclear test in October, 1962, with parts recovered by the AEC. He said that McNamara put him in charge of developing a ballistic missile defense system. Quite a heady chain of adventures for a 27-year-old economist!
I am Douglas Dean Johnson, an independent journalist. In an investigation extending over four months, I compared some of Malmgren's key claims to documents that I obtained from various components of the National Archives and Records Administration, the Library of Congress, and other places. These included confidential reports that the FBI prepared for background clearances in 1970 and 1971, which contained detailed recitations of Malmgren's earlier jobs and previous security clearances, signed and certified by Malmgren himself under penalty of law. (I was able to get these key FBI documents declassified on an expedited basis.) I also obtained Malmgren's complete Office Personnel File, the voluminous documentary record of his federal jobs, including federal job applications and histories that Malmgren signed and certified in 1963, 1964, and 1970.
The documents dissolved multiple key cornerstones of Malmgren's tales-- for example, his claim to have held a Q clearance. They showed that Malmgren actually spent 1962-64 working as an unglamorous economics researcher and analyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a think-tank Pentagon contractor. He was never an "advisor" to President Kennedy, much less a Q-cleared UFO investigator for JFK and the NSC.
In my 20,000-word initial article published on May 20, 2025, "Harald Malmgren: real-world history vs. grandiose fantasy," I compared Malmgren's true career history with the record supported by documents. I examined ten specific Malmgren claims (selected from a much larger number of dubious tales), as follows:
1. That Harald Malmgren, upon obtaining his doctorate from Oxford University in 1961, was such a singular star that Cornell University offered him a newly endowed chair in mathematics and engineering, thereby allowing him to skip starting out as a lowly "assistant professor," but rather "start at the top."
2. That Malmgren "was one of the first people on Earth to break the four-minute mile, after Roger Bannister," and "could repeatedly break the four-minute mile in his 20s."
3. That McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to President Kennedy, called Malmgren in 1962 to recruit him to work as one of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's group of close associates, known informally but widely as the "whiz kids."
4. That Malmgren's real-world employment starting in July 1962 as an economics researcher and analyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a Pentagon-affiliated private think tank, was merely "a paperwork formality," and that he was actually immediately empowered to serve as McNamara's personal liaison to Bundy and to the National Security Council, and spent his days working on missions of the highest sensitivity, such as calming down the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Malmgren said: "I was appointed liaison between McNamara and McGeorge Bundy and JFK– I mean, pretty critical job."
5. That in 1962, Malmgren held a "Q" clearance from the Atomic Energy Commission, allowing him access to nuclear secrets, and empowering him to lead the White House investigation into the details of a October 1962 nonhuman-craft (UFO) knockdown and recovery.
6. That Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara made Malmgren a leader in developing plans for a ballistic missile defense system, and that Malmgren's ideas were a major factor in the development of missile-defense thinking.
7. That Malmgren was an expert on nuclear issues, later closely associated on such matters with famous nuclear strategist Herman Kahn.
8. That Malmgren had a close relationship with Richard Bissell, Jr., one of the storied leaders of the early CIA, who imparted to Malmgren many amazing secrets of nonhuman visitation and other things.
9. That Malmgren was "part of the clan" and "an accepted inner-circle person" in the eminent Kennedy family, due to a close relationship with President Kennedy's brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, who "talked to me all the time."
10. That Malmgren was "senior advisor to four presidents."
Besides uncovering documents that shed light on many of these claims, I communicated directly with persons who were in a position to evaluate some of them. For example, with respect to claim no. 9, I communicated with Sargent Shriver's son, Mark Kennedy Shriver; the head of the Shriver Foundation, Lucy di Rosa; and Sargent's biographer, Scott Stossel; none of the three knew anything of Malmgren. With respect to claim no. 3, pertaining to McGeorge Bundy, Kai Bird, author of an acclaimed biography on McGeorge Bundy and his brother, told me, "Sorry, I never heard of him."
I intend to soon publish soon a sidebar article dealing specifically with Malmgren's tale of facing off against General Curtis LeMay in a Pentagon war room at the height of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Sheldon M. Stern, former chief historian (1977-2000) at the Kennedy Presidential Library and author of three books on the Cuban Missile Crisis, told me, "Malmgren's claim to have been appointed as 'liaison between McNamara and McGeorge Bundy and JFK' is ludicrous. There is no such record at the JFK Library on tape or on paper."
In a recent controversy over edits to Malmgren's Wikipedia profile (a matter in which I was not involved), Jesse Michels suggested that it was "shameless" for Wikipedia editors to delete various Malmgren claims, stating, "This man served his country for decades and just passed away. He can't defend himself." In my view, the premise is absurd, antithetical to fundamental requirements of historical research and investigative journalism. Tall tales such as those told by Malmgren are not innocent fun. Malmgren hijacked the personas of real people to serve as characters in his self-glorifying fantasies– Richard Bissell, Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Curtis LeMay, and Sargent Shriver, among others. Malmgren put words into the mouths of these men that they never said, and imputed to them actions that they never took. Each of these men "served his country for decades," at least by his own lights. Malmgren manufactured fan fiction about these men only long after they were dead – when they "can't defend" themselves against Malmgren's counterfeits. But the claims will not go unchallenged.
Moreover, Malmgren's most "interesting" claims demand scrutiny because if any were true they would have the most profound public policy implications--including his claims that the U.S. government gained possession of nonhuman craft in 1933, 1947, 1962, and perhaps other times, with the corollary that the government has lied about this for decades. When the allegations are that serious, the credibility of the person making them is the first test--and it deserves serious vetting before such claims are publicly embraced and widely disseminated.
On May 21, 2025, I published a separate article examining the theory that the Bluegill Triple Prime high-altitude nuclear test of October 26, 1962, knocked down a nonhuman UFO. Harald Malmgren attached himself to this story in 2024 and adapted it for his own narrative purposes, but the theory itself goes back to 2022 or earlier. I set aside the clearly bogus Malmgren overlay, and examined the evidence that proponents of the theory had previously cited for such a UFO event, consisting primarily of interpretations of three movies of the test, as well as certain entries in logs of ships in the Navy instrument-recovery fleet. My examination and provisional conclusions are found in "Bluegill Triple Prime: Did a nuclear test knock down a nonhuman craft in 1962?"
However, during the 21st century Malmgren progressively constructed an alternative history for himself, in which he played key roles in many matters of world-shaking import. In this version of his life, he was "a senior advisor to four presidents" (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford), conducting unrecorded secret missions for several of them. He was a behind-the-scenes intergenerational, international powerbroker. He was the repository of deep secrets pertaining to extraterrestrial visitation and government possession of nonhuman technology. Indeed, according to popular YouTuber Jesse Michels, whose 3.8-hour video of Malmgren's last interview ("I Touched a UFO!") has drawn about 700,000 views in five weeks, "Harald is a hero who saved the world (and more than once)."
Malmgren claimed that in 1962 he was personally recruited by National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy, was immediately made a key personal aide to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and was designated by McNamara as the secretary's personal liaison to the National Security Council. Malmgren said as McNamara's personal agent, he directly faced off against USAF Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay at a critical moment of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when LeMay wanted to launch a punitive nuclear strike on sites in the Soviet Union-- an intervention that Malmgren promoters insist prevented a nuclear catastrophe. Malmgren said that in 1962 he held a "Q" clearance from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), and that thus empowered, he personally investigated for President Kennedy a nonhuman UFO knocked down by a U.S. nuclear test in October, 1962, with parts recovered by the AEC. He said that McNamara put him in charge of developing a ballistic missile defense system. Quite a heady chain of adventures for a 27-year-old economist!
I am Douglas Dean Johnson, an independent journalist. In an investigation extending over four months, I compared some of Malmgren's key claims to documents that I obtained from various components of the National Archives and Records Administration, the Library of Congress, and other places. These included confidential reports that the FBI prepared for background clearances in 1970 and 1971, which contained detailed recitations of Malmgren's earlier jobs and previous security clearances, signed and certified by Malmgren himself under penalty of law. (I was able to get these key FBI documents declassified on an expedited basis.) I also obtained Malmgren's complete Office Personnel File, the voluminous documentary record of his federal jobs, including federal job applications and histories that Malmgren signed and certified in 1963, 1964, and 1970.
The documents dissolved multiple key cornerstones of Malmgren's tales-- for example, his claim to have held a Q clearance. They showed that Malmgren actually spent 1962-64 working as an unglamorous economics researcher and analyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a think-tank Pentagon contractor. He was never an "advisor" to President Kennedy, much less a Q-cleared UFO investigator for JFK and the NSC.
In my 20,000-word initial article published on May 20, 2025, "Harald Malmgren: real-world history vs. grandiose fantasy," I compared Malmgren's true career history with the record supported by documents. I examined ten specific Malmgren claims (selected from a much larger number of dubious tales), as follows:
1. That Harald Malmgren, upon obtaining his doctorate from Oxford University in 1961, was such a singular star that Cornell University offered him a newly endowed chair in mathematics and engineering, thereby allowing him to skip starting out as a lowly "assistant professor," but rather "start at the top."
2. That Malmgren "was one of the first people on Earth to break the four-minute mile, after Roger Bannister," and "could repeatedly break the four-minute mile in his 20s."
3. That McGeorge Bundy, National Security Advisor to President Kennedy, called Malmgren in 1962 to recruit him to work as one of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's group of close associates, known informally but widely as the "whiz kids."
4. That Malmgren's real-world employment starting in July 1962 as an economics researcher and analyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a Pentagon-affiliated private think tank, was merely "a paperwork formality," and that he was actually immediately empowered to serve as McNamara's personal liaison to Bundy and to the National Security Council, and spent his days working on missions of the highest sensitivity, such as calming down the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Malmgren said: "I was appointed liaison between McNamara and McGeorge Bundy and JFK– I mean, pretty critical job."
5. That in 1962, Malmgren held a "Q" clearance from the Atomic Energy Commission, allowing him access to nuclear secrets, and empowering him to lead the White House investigation into the details of a October 1962 nonhuman-craft (UFO) knockdown and recovery.
6. That Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara made Malmgren a leader in developing plans for a ballistic missile defense system, and that Malmgren's ideas were a major factor in the development of missile-defense thinking.
7. That Malmgren was an expert on nuclear issues, later closely associated on such matters with famous nuclear strategist Herman Kahn.
8. That Malmgren had a close relationship with Richard Bissell, Jr., one of the storied leaders of the early CIA, who imparted to Malmgren many amazing secrets of nonhuman visitation and other things.
9. That Malmgren was "part of the clan" and "an accepted inner-circle person" in the eminent Kennedy family, due to a close relationship with President Kennedy's brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, who "talked to me all the time."
10. That Malmgren was "senior advisor to four presidents."
Besides uncovering documents that shed light on many of these claims, I communicated directly with persons who were in a position to evaluate some of them. For example, with respect to claim no. 9, I communicated with Sargent Shriver's son, Mark Kennedy Shriver; the head of the Shriver Foundation, Lucy di Rosa; and Sargent's biographer, Scott Stossel; none of the three knew anything of Malmgren. With respect to claim no. 3, pertaining to McGeorge Bundy, Kai Bird, author of an acclaimed biography on McGeorge Bundy and his brother, told me, "Sorry, I never heard of him."
I intend to soon publish soon a sidebar article dealing specifically with Malmgren's tale of facing off against General Curtis LeMay in a Pentagon war room at the height of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Sheldon M. Stern, former chief historian (1977-2000) at the Kennedy Presidential Library and author of three books on the Cuban Missile Crisis, told me, "Malmgren's claim to have been appointed as 'liaison between McNamara and McGeorge Bundy and JFK' is ludicrous. There is no such record at the JFK Library on tape or on paper."
In a recent controversy over edits to Malmgren's Wikipedia profile (a matter in which I was not involved), Jesse Michels suggested that it was "shameless" for Wikipedia editors to delete various Malmgren claims, stating, "This man served his country for decades and just passed away. He can't defend himself." In my view, the premise is absurd, antithetical to fundamental requirements of historical research and investigative journalism. Tall tales such as those told by Malmgren are not innocent fun. Malmgren hijacked the personas of real people to serve as characters in his self-glorifying fantasies– Richard Bissell, Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Curtis LeMay, and Sargent Shriver, among others. Malmgren put words into the mouths of these men that they never said, and imputed to them actions that they never took. Each of these men "served his country for decades," at least by his own lights. Malmgren manufactured fan fiction about these men only long after they were dead – when they "can't defend" themselves against Malmgren's counterfeits. But the claims will not go unchallenged.
Moreover, Malmgren's most "interesting" claims demand scrutiny because if any were true they would have the most profound public policy implications--including his claims that the U.S. government gained possession of nonhuman craft in 1933, 1947, 1962, and perhaps other times, with the corollary that the government has lied about this for decades. When the allegations are that serious, the credibility of the person making them is the first test--and it deserves serious vetting before such claims are publicly embraced and widely disseminated.
On May 21, 2025, I published a separate article examining the theory that the Bluegill Triple Prime high-altitude nuclear test of October 26, 1962, knocked down a nonhuman UFO. Harald Malmgren attached himself to this story in 2024 and adapted it for his own narrative purposes, but the theory itself goes back to 2022 or earlier. I set aside the clearly bogus Malmgren overlay, and examined the evidence that proponents of the theory had previously cited for such a UFO event, consisting primarily of interpretations of three movies of the test, as well as certain entries in logs of ships in the Navy instrument-recovery fleet. My examination and provisional conclusions are found in "Bluegill Triple Prime: Did a nuclear test knock down a nonhuman craft in 1962?"
Last edited:
