Mysterious disappearance of UFO-linked Air Force general sparks nationwide search

Todd Feinman

Senior Member
General McCasland has gone missing!

"A retired US Air Force general who led laboratories linked to UFO research has been reported missing from New Mexico"

LINK (Daily Mail)

FWIW, I knew a person (now passed), who knew General Craigie (director of Wright-Patterson laboratories around Roswell time); he told her as child UFOs were real.
LINK

McCasland showed up in Podesta leaks talking about UFOs. He's the guy Congress needs to put under oath and question. Avril Haines, too.
 
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There are a lot more relevant details in the article that you really should have included:

Article:
The sheriff's office issued a Silver Alert, a public notification system used to locate missing seniors or individuals with Alzheimer's, dementia, or other medical conditions.

'Due to his medical issues, law enforcement is concerned for his safety,' the office said.


It's one of those stories where pre-existing bias can influence what you think is happening. If you think he was telling the truth about the US having zero-point energy, then you'll think the deep state has assassinated him (but why now).

If you think his claims were somewhat delusional, then you'll lean towards this maybe being part of a sad mental decline.
 
The search involves the local sheriff and the local FBI field office, so is it really "national"?

We're seeing the process of an unrelated fact triggering a complete narrative that people use like a fairy tale to simplify their world view. The men in black going after UFO believers is such a trope that serves a psychological purpose while not really rooted in reality. (See the ICE deployments for an example of what it looks like when a government goes after a demographic.)

You could just as well assume a narrative around UFOlogists abducting McCasland to interrogate him, which would, while being equally unlikely, at least justify a "nationwide" search.
 
The desert can be an unforgiving place, and if, for example, he went off on a solo hike, it would be very easy to be disabled and stranded by something as simple as a broken ankle in a place that is off marked trails.

When I lived in New Mexico there was a time when a woman and two small children were missing when their car malfunctioned. They were the family of a state senator or representative (IIRC), helicopters and police were actively searching for them, and they actually had a car on a road ...yet it took two days to find them, and that was only because she hiked out and flagged a car. It's a big and largely empty state!
 
You could just as well assume a narrative around UFOlogists abducting McCasland to interrogate him, which would, while being equally unlikely, at least justify a "nationwide" search.

Perhaps not equally unlikely.
I have been concerned for a while that in these turbulent times that being an outspoken UFO proponent and claiming lots of INSIDE KNOWLEDGE might actually be something of a risk. Other true believers, seeing people announce the imminent arrival of aliens, might decide that they really need to have some of that inside knowedge. One way to get that would be to kidnap the person claiming that knowledge and "encouraging" them to tell all. Which can be a problem if their claims are so much hot air. The kidnappers might go to extremes to try to torture that knowledge out of them.

As an example, someone claims to know where UFO's are buried. Perhaps someone might decide if they knew where they were they could steal one of those UFO's and escape from Earth before the 2027 aliens arrive? Beware of the crazies.
 
does this bit have something to do with the thread topic?
McCasland was in the line of succession from Craigie of being in charge of the research labs at Wright-Patterson. Chief Engineer, iirc.
But, Mick was correct in that I should have clarified why he was probably missing, as the headline I adopted for the thread was pretty sensationalistic.
 
does this bit have something to do with the thread topic?
McCasland was in the line of succession of being in charge of the research labs at Wright-Patterson
Did you mean chain of command?
Okay, Craigie from Wikipedia:

"(he was) deputy chief of the Air Technical Service's Engineering Division. He became chief of the division in August 1945 and was promoted to major general in July 1946.

In 1947, he became chief of the Research and Engineering Division at Headquarters Army Air Force. That October he was appointed Director of Research and Development under the deputy chief of staff for material at Headquarters U.S. Air Force, and the following September returned to Wright-Patterson as commandant of the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology."

And McCasland:

"In May 2011, McCasland left Washington for his final posting, assuming command of Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, a position he held until his retirement in October 2013.[1] At AFRL, he led billions of dollars in advanced materials sciences and future weapons research across one of the largest scientific centers in the Department of Defense.[1]"​
McCasland's UFO connection:​
"​McCasland's involvement with the topic of unidentified flying objects became public when WikiLeaks released an archive of Hillary Clinton Campaign chairman John Podesta's email records in 2016.[17] The archive of documents was obtained from a data breach by Fancy Bear, a hacking group which the United States Government alleges is associated with military intelligence assets of the Russian Federation.[18][19][20][21]

Podesta's involvement in UFO disclosure initiatives is well documented throughout his service in both the Clinton and Obama administrations; DeLonge led To The Stars, a nonprofit associated with the UFO disclosure movement.[17] The pair's collaboration on seemingly fringe science led some to speculate that public officials like McCasland were manipulating DeLonge into developing a UFO cover story for new classified American defense technology of a terrestrial origin.[22][23][24] Other speculation focused on a relationship between McCasland and Michael Duggin, an Australian-American scientist with AFRL at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexicowho spent years of his Air Force career in research on UFO phenomena.[24] Duggin was an assistant to J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer who led the Air Force's infamous Project Blue Book, one of the first investigations of reported encounters with UFOs by the United States Government.[24]"​
——————————————

So, I knew someone who knew Craigie, and I interviewed her. Well-connected, upstanding member of the community. I met her and learned she had lived in LA during the "Battle of Los Angeles"!and we got talking. She was very old, but had been the neighbor of Craigie. He told her that UFOs were real and we shouldn't be afraid of them, and that he couldn't talk about it because he had promised the Air Force that he wouldn't. She said he always seemed very distracted, and apparently had photos on the walls in his study that he would take down before guests arrived so that they wouldn't be alarmed. She had no interest in UFOs, wonderful woman who is passed now. She would have been all over the History Channel if things had gone differently…. I think my eyes visibly popped out of my head when she told me this stuff. I had brought the topic of UFOs up because she had been in LA during the infamous incident. I made a point of asking elderly folks if they had had any unusual sky-related experiences, as many who had lived through the '40s and '50s were still around, and I had already had my own two experiences. ​

From Google AI:​
Lieutenant General Laurence C. Craigie
was a key U.S. Army Air Forces officer involved in the immediate aftermath of the 1947 Roswell UFO incident. As Chief of the Engineering Division at Wright Field, he visited Roswell shortly after debris was discovered, amid reports that he authorized or oversaw the investigation, fueling speculation regarding a high-level cover-up.
Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Sarasota Herald-Tribune +3


Air Force has been dead silent through all of this recent stuff.
 
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McCasland was in the line of succession from Craigie of being in charge of the research labs at Wright-Patterson. Chief Engineer, iirc.
But, Mick was correct in that I should have clarified why he was probably missing, as the headline I adopted for the thread was pretty sensationalistic.

According to the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office Silver Alert, law enforcement is concerned for retired Maj. Gen. William Neil McCasland's safety due to his medical issues. And also due to his age, there's been some allegations that he may have gotten lost somewhere in the desert of New Mexico. I guess soon we'll know whether these allegations happen to be what really happened to him.
https://www.abqjournal.com/news/retired-kirtland-commander-reported-missing-since-friday/2991867
 
Air Force has been dead silent through all of this recent stuff.
What do you want them to say? If they have nothing to report, then they have nothing to report. If they issue a statement saying they have nothing to report, there are a subset of people who will immediately claim that they're covering up "The Truth", which is whatever they choose to think.
 
As an example, someone claims to know where UFO's are buried. Perhaps someone might decide if they knew where they were they could steal one of those UFO's and escape from Earth before the 2027 aliens arrive? Beware of the crazies.
"someone"=Ross Coulthart? :-p
I don't wish it on the guy, but one can dream...
i guess with @MapperGuy 's input a "related to ufo beliefs" speculation might be a tad bit more likely than a hairless baboon in brasil.
The only government agency kidnapping abducting people is ICE, and they don't care about UFOs, only the human kind of aliens. There is ZERO precedent for people getting abducted for their UFO beliefs, unless you count abductions by aliens, for which I'd say the precedent is still zero but at least we have witness claims.
 
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The only government agency kidnapping people is ICE, and they don't care about UFOs, only the human kind of aliens. There is ZERO precedent for people getting abducted for their UFO beliefs, unless you count abductions by aliens, for which I'd say the precedent is still zero but at least we have witness claims.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal" - Richard Nixon 1977

So when ICE does stuff that sure looks like kidnapping, we say "It's not illegal, they're just arresting the worst of the worst (day laborers)."
 
So, I knew someone who knew Craigie, and I interviewed her. Well-connected, upstanding member of the community. I met her and learned she had lived in LA during the "Battle of Los Angeles"!and we got talking. She was very old, but had been the neighbor of Craigie. He told her that UFOs were real and we shouldn't be afraid of them, and that he couldn't talk about it because he had promised the Air Force that he wouldn't. She said he always seemed very distracted, and apparently had photos on the walls in his study that he would take down before guests arrived so that they wouldn't be alarmed. She had no interest in UFOs, wonderful woman who is passed now. She would have been all over the History Channel if things had gone differently…. I think my eyes visibly popped out of my head when she told me this stuff. I had brought the topic of UFOs up because she had been in LA during the infamous incident. I made a point of asking elderly folks if they had had any unusual sky-related experiences, as many who had lived through the '40s and '50s were still around, and I had already had my own two experiences.

This 2nd hand tale follows on from your overly sensationalized thread title. It's what happens when too many things are considered evidence of UFOs, cover-ups and other conspiratorial thinking.

It appears McCasland, the subject of this thread, retired from the Air Force in 2013. The notion that facilities he worked for at WPAFB had something to do with aliens and UFOs, is tied to some of the Roswell Mogal balloon wreckage being taken there and to the later claims of the infamous "Hanger 18", which doesn't really exist. Recall that, the Roswell event was in 1947, so not only before McCasland was at WPAFB, but a full 11 years before he was born.

McCasland headed the AFRL at WPAFB between 2011 and 2013, so the idea that he that he was in the line of succession from the previous different research facilities that Craigie was running in the late '40s is tenuous at best. McCasland did not directly follow on from Craigie as there is a ~60 year gap between their respective assignments.

Even the idea that McCasland had much to do with UFOs, is based on a few emails and a lot of talk from Tom DeLong. From the article you posted (bold by me):

External Quote:

In the emails, musician Tom DeLonge, founder of Blink-182 and the UFO-focused To The Stars Academy (TTSA), referenced McCasland multiple times, claiming he had advised him on disclosure matters and helped assemble an advisory team.

DeLonge also suggested on a podcast that he was being advised by McCasland and several named and unnamed insiders to carry out a slow disclosure of UAP information to the American public from US government or contractor sources.

He claimed that the US government and contractor groups already possess free energy technology, sometimes referred to as zero-point energy, that could make conventional energy sources obsolete, stating: 'One inch of air could power the U.S. for hundreds of years.'
So, DeLonge was claiming he MAY have been talking to McCasland about zero-point energy. Why? Likely because DeLong was looking for investors (bold by me):

External Quote:

DeLonge suggested that TTSA was being restrained from releasing all the information government insiders had provided, but that the organization sought investment from private sources to develop this technology for energy and aerospace purposes.
I'll not get deep into TTSA here, suffice to say it involved DeLong, Hal Putoff, Chris Melon, Lue Elizondo among others and faded away when it became apparent DeLong was benefiting financially from what little investments it raised. More importantly from the article:

External Quote:
These claims come from DeLonge and have not been confirmed by McCasland or official records.
So, we have a 68 year old guy that appears to have medical issues and has gone missing. His last known sighting was at Quail Run Ct NE, which is on the edge of Sandia Heights, a suburb of Albuquerque, and just to the east of his neighborhood, is a whole lot of nothing to get lost in:

1772564028971.png


His UFO connections are dubious, though possible, if he was dealing with DeLong and TTSA. However, that was all long after his retirement. As usual we have fantastic claims of classified secret UFOs and zero-point energy systems being revealed by people that would have known about them but couldn't share the classified information they had. Except they did, at least to DeLong. According to DeLong. Who was looking for investors.

His only other UFO connection is that he headed the AFRL at WPAFB in the mid '00s. As there was no AFRL at WPAFB in the Roswell era, you have made a tenuous connection between McCasland and the AFRL and it's predecessor agencies from 60 years before by suggesting Craigie, who ran some of those agencies in the '40s told a Ms. McKinnon at some point that:

He told her that UFOs were real and we shouldn't be afraid of them, and that he couldn't talk about it because he had promised the Air Force that he wouldn't

This is known as a non-sequitur. Even if Ms. McKinnon's memory is correct, it could just be interpreted as Craigie offhandedly admitting he knew many UFOs were in fact Air Force/CIA assets, such as the A12. There is no context to this discussion, though it appears Ms. McKinnon spent some amount of time with Craigie if she knew about his pin-ups redacted photos in his office:

. She said he always seemed very distracted, and apparently had photos on the walls in his study that he would take down before guests arrived so that they wouldn't be alarmed

Aside from both being in the Air Force and running some research facilities at WPAFB, among other places, there is no direct connection between Craigie and McCasland.

While we're at it, lets remember that while Ms. McKinnon was around for The Battle of Los Angeles, though she was only 7 (1935-2023), she ended up in West Linn OR, which is only about 40 miles from McMinnville and the Trent's famous UFO photo ;) :

Screenshot 2026-03-03 10.44.36 AM.png
 
She lived next door to Craigie, knew his family. She didn't see anything herself during the Battle of LA, but she remembered the incident. There is much talk of legacy UFO programs, so it's interesting to wonder about how such things could be transmitted over the years, if they are. I don't think Barbara had the impression he was talking about our devices. It's interesting because there used to be a website called presidentialufo, where I saw it was claimed Craigie had told someone he couldn't talk about UFOs because he had made me a promise to Truman. So I was surprised to hear her tell me those things. She had zero interest in UFOs. I actually think she was scared of them. Worked as an information volunteer at city hall, part of Rotary, iirc. Knew nothing about UFOs.
 
I had never heard of a "Silver Alert" before.
Damn, now I've got one more reason to always be lookin' over my shoulder! :p

In all seriousness, while yes, it seems obvious to me that the real story here is that a confused old guy probably got lost,
(and the OP could've done a better job explaining that) that's not exactly shocking. Obviously we all hope he gets found,
safe. And I learned about Silver Alerts, though the actual story isn't particularly interesting to me.
 
The Battle of Los Angeles wasn't a battle, and nothing inexplicable happened.
Anti-aircraft artillery units around Los Angeles opened fire and continued for approximately one hour, 25 February 1942.
The alert level had been raised the day before, the Office of Naval Intelligence stating that an attack on California could be expected within 10 hours. The day before that (23 February) a Japanese submarine had shelled an oil facility near Santa Barbara, causing almost no damage but no doubt demonstrating to many Californians/ forces stationed in California that the threat was potentially much closer to home than they might have thought. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor had taken place less than 3 months earlier.

External Quote:
In 1983, the U.S. Office of Air Force History attributed the event to a case of "war nerves" triggered by a lost weather balloon and exacerbated by stray flares and shell bursts from adjoining batteries. As an example of incompetence, the incident was derisively referred to as the "Battle of Los Angeles" or the "Great Los Angeles Air Raid".
Wikipedia, Battle of Los Angeles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Los_Angeles
Maybe it's a bit harsh to describe the AA fire as being due to incompetence in the circumstances.

I don't know, but I'd guess similar events were common across Europe (including Britain and Russia) during World War 2; most air defence systems relied on the Mk.1 eyeball. False alarms (and unnecessary anti-aircraft fire) wouldn't be as memorable for people living in areas that experienced actual air attacks, and wouldn't be newsworthy in the way that the Los Angeles incident was for Angelinos.
 
This 2nd hand tale follows on from your overly sensationalized thread title. It's what happens when too many things are considered evidence of UFOs, cover-ups and other conspiratorial thinking.

It appears McCasland, the subject of this thread, retired from the Air Force in 2013. The notion that facilities he worked for at WPAFB had something to do with aliens and UFOs, is tied to some of the Roswell Mogal balloon wreckage being taken there and to the later claims of the infamous "Hanger 18", which doesn't really exist. Recall that, the Roswell event was in 1947, so not only before McCasland was at WPAFB, but a full 11 years before he was born.

McCasland headed the AFRL at WPAFB between 2011 and 2013, so the idea that he that he was in the line of succession from the previous different research facilities that Craigie was running in the late '40s is tenuous at best. McCasland did not directly follow on from Craigie as there is a ~60 year gap between their respective assignments.

Even the idea that McCasland had much to do with UFOs, is based on a few emails and a lot of talk from Tom DeLong. From the article you posted (bold by me):

External Quote:

In the emails, musician Tom DeLonge, founder of Blink-182 and the UFO-focused To The Stars Academy (TTSA), referenced McCasland multiple times, claiming he had advised him on disclosure matters and helped assemble an advisory team.

DeLonge also suggested on a podcast that he was being advised by McCasland and several named and unnamed insiders to carry out a slow disclosure of UAP information to the American public from US government or contractor sources.

He claimed that the US government and contractor groups already possess free energy technology, sometimes referred to as zero-point energy, that could make conventional energy sources obsolete, stating: 'One inch of air could power the U.S. for hundreds of years.'
So, DeLonge was claiming he MAY have been talking to McCasland about zero-point energy. Why? Likely because DeLong was looking for investors (bold by me):

External Quote:

DeLonge suggested that TTSA was being restrained from releasing all the information government insiders had provided, but that the organization sought investment from private sources to develop this technology for energy and aerospace purposes.
I'll not get deep into TTSA here, suffice to say it involved DeLong, Hal Putoff, Chris Melon, Lue Elizondo among others and faded away when it became apparent DeLong was benefiting financially from what little investments it raised. More importantly from the article:

External Quote:
These claims come from DeLonge and have not been confirmed by McCasland or official records.
So, we have a 68 year old guy that appears to have medical issues and has gone missing. His last known sighting was at Quail Run Ct NE, which is on the edge of Sandia Heights, a suburb of Albuquerque, and just to the east of his neighborhood, is a whole lot of nothing to get lost in:

View attachment 88872

His UFO connections are dubious, though possible, if he was dealing with DeLong and TTSA. However, that was all long after his retirement. As usual we have fantastic claims of classified secret UFOs and zero-point energy systems being revealed by people that would have known about them but couldn't share the classified information they had. Except they did, at least to DeLong. According to DeLong. Who was looking for investors.

His only other UFO connection is that he headed the AFRL at WPAFB in the mid '00s. As there was no AFRL at WPAFB in the Roswell era, you have made a tenuous connection between McCasland and the AFRL and it's predecessor agencies from 60 years before by suggesting Craigie, who ran some of those agencies in the '40s told a Ms. McKinnon at some point that:



This is known as a non-sequitur. Even if Ms. McKinnon's memory is correct, it could just be interpreted as Craigie offhandedly admitting he knew many UFOs were in fact Air Force/CIA assets, such as the A12. There is no context to this discussion, though it appears Ms. McKinnon spent some amount of time with Craigie if she knew about his pin-ups redacted photos in his office:



Aside from both being in the Air Force and running some research facilities at WPAFB, among other places, there is no direct connection between Craigie and McCasland.

While we're at it, lets remember that while Ms. McKinnon was around for The Battle of Los Angeles, though she was only 7 (1935-2023), she ended up in West Linn OR, which is only about 40 miles from McMinnville and the Trent's famous UFO photo ;) :

View attachment 88871

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I guess you wrongly misspelled Ret. Gen. William Neil McCasland's name as McKinnon.

It's worth pointing out that, according to the US Air Force's official website, McCasland holds a doctorate degree in astronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Regarding scientific papers, McCasland's published works stem from his academic research at MIT.
https://www.af.mil/About-Us/Biographies/Display/article/104776/major-general-william-n-mccasland/#:~:text=General McCasland holds a doctorate,and Fannie Hertz Foundation fellowship.
 
In all seriousness, while yes, it seems obvious to me that the real story here is that a confused old guy probably got lost,
(and the OP could've done a better job explaining that) that's not exactly shocking. Obviously we all hope he gets found,

Absolutely.

Just as a side note, it seems as of late, that the really bad fate have been striking the lives of scientists:. Based on reports from December 2025, Dr. Nuno Loureiro, the director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Plasma Science and Fusion Center, was fatally shot at his home in Brookline, Massachusetts.
And last month, a renowned Caltech astronomer who studied distant exoplanets and discovered was shot and killed outside his home in a rural area near Los Angeles, the LA Times reported.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly08y25688o
https://www.latimes.com/california/...cist-fatally-shot-on-porch-in-antelope-valley
 
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