FigureLeslie Kean (b. 1960)

BA Sarah Lawrence College, 1982. Investigative journalist with a long-form-print rather than broadcast pedigree; held no salaried newsroom staff position. Her UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record (Harmony, 2010) — a 384-page case-document compilation built around named former military officers (Belgian Maj. Gen. Wilfried De Brouwer, Iranian Maj. Parviz Jafari, French Gen. Denis Letty among others) — was the most credentialed pre-2017 mass-market English-language statement of the case for serious UAP investigation. The book carried a foreword by John Podesta. On 16 December 2017, Kean was the co-byline (with Helene Cooper, NYT Pentagon correspondent, and Ralph Blumenthal, retired NYT investigative reporter) on the New York Times article ‘Glowing Auras and Black Money,’ which revealed the existence of AATIP, published the Nimitz Tic Tac (FLIR1) video, and introduced Luis Elizondo as a public figure. The article is the founding document of the post-2017 disclosure cycle. On 5 June 2023, Kean and Blumenthal were the co-bylines on The Debrief article ‘Intelligence Officials Say U.S. Has Retrieved Craft of Non-Human Origin,’ which broke David Grusch’s program-existence allegations. Kean is unusual in the field for her insistence on a sourced-document-and-named-officer methodology — her work tends to lean on retired flag officers and named technical witnesses rather than anonymous insiders, and is one of the principal vectors by which mainstream American newsroom standards have been applied to UAP material.