Following UFO Expert Disappearance, New Mexico Residents Asked to Hand Over Home Security Footage
William Neil McCasland, a 68-year-old retired Air Force general and UFO expert, went missing from his New Mexico home on February 27 and hasn’t been seen since. Now, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office has asked more than 600 residents in the neighborhood near McCasland’s home to hand over any security camera footage they have that may aid in finding the missing general.
The request from law enforcement is an escalation of the search, which has been ongoing for nearly two weeks. Last week, the FBI issued a call for any information that may help in its investigation, including video footage that may have incidentally captured McCasland’s location. “We are asking for your help in finding him. We believe there are people who have information valuable to locating Neil who have not yet spoken to law enforcement. This could include people who have been in the Sandia mountains and may have seen Neil or captured him on a GoPro or other recording device, specifically on Friday, February 27 or Saturday, February 28,” the agency wrote.
McCasland’s unexplained disappearance is concerning for all of the normal reasons that it is worrisome when an elderly person goes missing—the initial report of the general’s unknown whereabouts led to the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office issuing a Silver Alert. But this case is particularly notable given McCasland’s background. The retired veteran previously served as the commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory and was believed to have been involved in the investigation of UFO activity during his service.
According to McCasland’s biography on the Air Force’s website, he was in charge of “managing the Air Force’s $2.2 billion science and technology program.” He primarily spent his time at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, which was the headquarters of Project Blue Book, the military branch’s probe into UFOs.
That has made him a particular person of interest in the UFO community. Ross Coulthart, an investigative journalist (and maybe a bit of a crank) who has been a major public advocate for disclosure of information about UFOs, called McCasland’s disappearance “an issue of grave concern,” according to Newsweek. On a podcast, Coulthart raised the possibility of “foul play,” calling McCasland a potential target for geopolitical foes like Russia and China. Others have pointed to the timing as being suspicious, noting that McCasland went missing near the start of America’s war on Iran, though there’s obviously no evidence to suggest any sort of connection at this point.
McCasland has been a figure of curiosity for the UFO-obsessed for some time now. As Newsweek noted, his name came up in the emails of former White House chief of staff John Podesta, who served former President Bill Clinton. McCasland was mentioned in messages between Podesta and Blink-182 guitarist Tom DeLonge, who is a bit of a UFO enthusiast. In the emails, DeLonge mentioned to Podesta that McCasland was in charge of the laboratory at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where remains of a supposed UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico were sent to. “He not only knows what I’m trying to achieve, he helped assemble my advisory team. He’s a very important man,” DeLonge wrote of McCasland.
