Stanton Friedman

Stanton Terry Friedman was born on 29 July 1934 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and raised in Linden. He attended Rutgers University from 1951 to 1953 before transferring to the University of Chicago, where he completed a Bachelor of Science in 1955 and a Master of Science in nuclear physics in 1956. He entered the defence industry and spent fourteen years working on classified nuclear programmes: General Electric (1956 to 1959), Aerojet General Nucleonics (1959 to 1963), General Motors (1963 to 1966), Westinghouse (1966 to 1968), and TRW Systems (1969 to 1970). His projects included nuclear aircraft propulsion, fission and fusion rockets, and compact nuclear power plants for space applications.

Friedman began lecturing publicly on unidentified flying objects in 1967, while still employed in the defence sector. By 1970 he had left the industry to pursue UFO research and public speaking full-time. He relocated to Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, in the early 1980s with his wife Marilyn Kimball, and held dual American and Canadian citizenship for the rest of his life. The City of Fredericton declared 27 August 2007 "Stanton Friedman Day."

He died of a heart attack on 13 May 2019 at Toronto Pearson International Airport, aged 84, while returning from a speaking engagement in Columbus, Ohio. In the months before his death he donated his personal archive of research papers, correspondence, and case files to the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick.

The event that placed Friedman at the centre of modern UFO research was a telephone call. In February 1978, while on a lecture tour in Louisiana, a television station manager in Baton Rouge told Friedman he should speak with a retired military officer named Jesse Marcel. Friedman contacted Marcel the following day. Marcel, the former intelligence officer of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell Army Air Field, described how in July 1947 he had recovered debris from a ranch northwest of Roswell, New Mexico, that he believed was not of terrestrial origin, and how the material had been confiscated and replaced with a weather balloon for the press photographs taken at Brigadier General Roger Ramey's office in Fort Worth. It was the first time Marcel had described the recovery to a civilian investigator. The interview reopened the Roswell case to sustained public scrutiny after three decades in which it had attracted almost no attention outside the classified record.

In December 1984, filmmaker Jaime Shandera received an undeveloped roll of 35mm film in a brown paper package bearing a New Mexico postmark. When developed, the film revealed what appeared to be a 1952 briefing document describing a covert intelligence body called "Majestic-12," purportedly established by President Truman in 1947 to manage the recovery and investigation of non-human craft. Shandera shared the material with researcher William Moore, who brought Friedman into the analysis. In 1985, an anonymous tip led the three to the National Archives in Washington, where they located a memorandum from Robert Cutler to General Nathan Twining that appeared to corroborate the programme's existence. Friedman published his findings in TOP SECRET/MAJIC: Operation Majestic-12 and the United States Government's UFO Cover-Up (Marlowe and Company, 1996). He argued for the documents' authenticity throughout his career. The documents remain contested in the documentary record.

Friedman published six books over three decades. Crash at Corona: The U.S. Military Retrieval and Cover-Up of a UFO (Paragon House, 1992), co-authored with Don Berliner, was the first book-length treatment of the Roswell case drawing on Marcel's testimony and subsequent witness interviews. Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience (Career Press, 2007), co-authored with Kathleen Marden (Betty Hill's niece), documented the 1961 Hill encounter from the family's records. Flying Saucers and Science (New Page Books, 2008) collected his arguments for the scientific plausibility of interstellar travel and for a systematic government cover-up of UFO evidence.

Friedman described himself as "the flying saucer physicist," a label he used in lectures and interviews for decades. By his own account, he lectured at more than six hundred colleges and universities across fifty American states, ten Canadian provinces, and nineteen countries. The lectures followed a consistent structure: a presentation of physical-evidence cases, radar-visual sightings, and institutional documentation, followed by a question period.

• 1934, Born 29 July, Elizabeth, New Jersey.
• 1951 to 1953, Rutgers University.
• 1953 to 1956, University of Chicago. BSc 1955, MSc nuclear physics 1956.
• 1956 to 1959, General Electric. Nuclear aircraft propulsion programme.
• 1959 to 1963, Aerojet General Nucleonics. Nuclear rocket development.
• 1963 to 1966, General Motors. Nuclear programmes.
• 1966 to 1968, Westinghouse. Compact nuclear power plants for space applications.
• 1969 to 1970, TRW Systems.
• 1967, Began public lecturing on UFOs.
• 1978, Interviewed Jesse Marcel in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, reopening the Roswell case.
• 1984, Joined William Moore and Jaime Shandera in the investigation of the MJ-12 documents.
• 1992, Published Crash at Corona with Don Berliner (Paragon House).
• 1996, Published TOP SECRET/MAJIC (Marlowe and Company).
• 2007, Published Captured! with Kathleen Marden (Career Press). City of Fredericton declared "Stanton Friedman Day," 27 August.
• 2008, Published Flying Saucers and Science (New Page Books).
• 2010, Published Science Was Wrong with Kathleen Marden (New Page Books).
• 2016, Published Fact, Fiction, and Flying Saucers with Kathleen Marden (New Page Books).
• 2019, Donated personal archive to the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick. Died 13 May at Toronto Pearson International Airport.

"I was the first one to talk to him. A lot of people don't know that. I was referred to Jesse by a television station manager in 1978, who was embarrassed because his reporter was late in arriving for an interview with me before my talk at Louisiana State University." Interview with Glenn Danforth, UFO Evidence.

"Physical trace cases, radar variable sightings, evidence! You don't talk about evidence!" CNN Larry King Live, 2007, panel discussion with Michael Shermer. Cited in Lydialyle Gibson, "Science? Fiction?", University of Chicago Magazine, September/October 2011.

"I am trying to lift the laughter curtain." CBC News interview, 2011. Cited in Colin McPhail, "Stanton Friedman, famed UFO researcher, dead at 84," CBC News, 14 May 2019.

Friedman's six published books constitute his primary documentary contribution to the record. Crash at Corona (1992) and TOP SECRET/MAJIC (1996) are the two most consequential single titles in the post-1978 Roswell and MJ-12 literatures.

The FBI maintained a file on Friedman during his years in the defence industry and his early UFO research activities. The file is accessible through the FBI Vault.

The Provincial Archives of New Brunswick hold Friedman's personal archive, donated in 2019 before his death. The collection includes research papers, correspondence, and case files accumulated over five decades of investigation.

• Roswell Incident, 1947, the case Friedman's 1978 Marcel interview reopened.
• Jesse Marcel, the 509th intelligence officer Friedman interviewed in February 1978.
• Betty Hill and Barney Hill, subjects of Captured! (2007), co-authored with Kathleen Marden.
• APRO Bulletin Collection, 258 issues, 1952 to 1988. Friedman's early research drew on APRO case files and witness databases.
• United States country profile.
• United States Disclosure Timeline, MJ-12 documents in the broader disclosure context.