Daniel Sheehan

Daniel Peter Sheehan (born April 9, 1945) is an American constitutional and public interest attorney who graduated from Harvard Law School in 1970 and co-founded the Harvard Civil Rights Law Review. Sheehan is known for his roles in the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, the Karen Silkwood case, and Iran-Contra, and has been active in UAP disclosure efforts for over five decades. He co-founded the Christic Institute and the Romero Institute, and in the disclosure space co-founded the New Paradigm Institute and the Sol Foundation.

Early life and education

Sheehan was born in Glens Falls, New York, on April 9, 1945. He initially attended Northeastern University, where he briefly participated in Army ROTC before resigning over ethical concerns about combat training involving non-combatants in Vietnam. He transferred to Harvard College, graduating in 1967 with a BA in American government studies, and then earned his Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1970, where he co-founded the Harvard Civil Rights Law Review.

Legal career

Pentagon Papers

Sheehan was part of the legal team representing the New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case, arguing in federal court against the Nixon administration's attempt to suppress publication. When the Times general counsel James Goodale came to his firm seeking representation, Sheehan's immediate advice was to publish. When U.S. Attorney Whitney North Seymour Jr. sought a prior restraint, Sheehan argued in chambers that the First Amendment stripped the government of any jurisdictional authority to seek such an order. The case was decided in thirteen days from injunction to Supreme Court ruling, with ten written opinions issued by nine justices.

Watergate

Sheehan's office represented James McCord in the Watergate burglary case, working to persuade McCord to cooperate with investigators — which McCord did through a letter to Judge John Sirica.

Karen Silkwood

Sheehan served as chief counsel in the Karen Silkwood case, winning a $10.5 million judgment against Kerr-McGee and shutting down the facility.

Jesuit headquarters and public interest law philosophy

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1970, Sheehan spent several years in practice before returning to Harvard Divinity School to pursue doctoral work in comparative social ethics. He was recruited by the Jesuit order to become general counsel for their new American social ministry headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he served for approximately ten years.

His approach to legal work is a form of "public interest law" developed in the 1970s, in which he and his clients reached an explicit agreement that he was representing not only the client's individual interests but "the issue itself and the people who need to get access to this information." He has consistently refused security clearances on the grounds that accepting one would prevent him from disclosing information he had obtained from other sources.

Christic Institute and Iran-Contra

Sheehan founded the Christic Institute, a nonprofit public-policy center. During the Iran–Contra affair investigation, Sheehan and the institute developed evidence connecting covert CIA operations to weapons smuggling and the intimidation of U.S. senators. He identified Theodore Shackley as the central coordinator of the off-the-shelf enterprise.

In 1986, the Christic Institute filed a $24 million civil suit, Avirgan v. Hull, on behalf of journalists Tony Avirgan and Martha Honey, who had been injured in the 1984 La Penca bombing; the suit alleged a conspiracy involving arms and drug trafficking and participation in political assassinations. The thirty named defendants reportedly included Iran-Contra figures John K. Singlaub, Richard Secord, Albert Hakim and Robert W. Owen; CIA officials Thomas G. Clines and Theodore Shackley; Contra leader Adolfo Calero; Medellín Cartel leaders Pablo Escobar and Jorge Ochoa; Costa Rican rancher John Hull; and mercenary Sam N. Hall. On June 23, 1988, Judge James Lawrence King dismissed the case, finding the plaintiffs had "made no showing of existence of genuine issues of material fact". The court ordered the Christic Institute to pay approximately $955,000 in attorney's fees and $79,500 in court costs, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the ruling; the Supreme Court later declined to hear a further appeal. The Internal Revenue Service subsequently stripped the institute of its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, citing political motivation; the penalty was imposed under Rule 11 for frivolous litigation. Avirgan later complained that Sheehan had pursued "wild allegations" instead of focusing on core factual issues, and writer Chip Berlet analyzed what he called "rightist influences" on the institute's conspiracy theories.

Sheehan also acted as counsel in the Greensboro massacre civil case, which arose from the 1979 killings of anti-Ku Klux Klan demonstrators in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Romero Institute and Lakota People's Law Project

After the collapse of the Christic Institute, Sheehan co-founded the Romero Institute, where he serves as chief counsel. In that role he manages the Lakota People's Law Project and has represented clients in litigation arising from the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Since 2015 he has lectured at the University of California, Santa Cruz on American history, politics, and the JFK assassination.

UAP disclosure work

Representing Dr. John Mack

Sheehan represented Dr. John Mack of Harvard University during Mack's confrontation with a Harvard faculty committee over his research into alien abduction contact experiences. In 1994, Sheehan was retained by Mack, head of the Department of Clinical Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, to represent him before a Harvard faculty tribunal convened after Mack published a book on alien contact experiences. The tribunal was chaired by Arnold Relman, editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. Sheehan challenged the panel's authority and invoked the agreement of Laurance Rockefeller to fund a full Harvard Grand Rounds at which military commanders and FAA officials would present evidence — an offer Harvard's legal counsel declined. With Rockefeller's financing, Sheehan interviewed virtually every major UFO investigator in the world, including Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs, Stanton Friedman, and Linda Moulton Howe, as well as the commander of Malmstrom Air Force Base and the chief investigator of the FAA.

Disclosure Project

Sheehan allegedly served for approximately twenty years as legal counsel for the Disclosure Project under Steven Greer. Greer described consulting Sheehan on the legal basis for publicly releasing witnesses from their security oaths, noting that Sheehan — "a constitutional attorney who did the Pentagon Papers" — helped Greer construct the argument that because the classified programs had denied access to every official in the constitutional chain of command, the programs were "rogue, a priori, illegal" and therefore the security oaths signed by personnel in those programs had "no enforceability."

Alleged Carter-era UFO investigation

In November 1976, following the election of President Jimmy Carter, Sheehan was allegedly contacted through the National Academy of Sciences and recruited by Marcia Smith, head of the Science and Technology Division of the Congressional Research Service, to assist with a presidential investigation into the UFO phenomenon. Smith reportedly asked Sheehan to contact the Vatican — through Jesuit headquarters — for access to any Vatican Archives information on the UFO phenomenon, and later arranged for him to access the classified portions of Project Blue Book at the new Madison Building of the Library of Congress. In those files, Sheehan has claimed he personally viewed photographs of a recovered non-human craft — approximately 30 meters across with a dome on top — that had skidded across a snow-covered field and embedded in an embankment, surrounded by U.S. Air Force personnel. He copied symbols inscribed around the base of the dome and showed them to his superior Father Bill Davis at Jesuit headquarters.

Smith also reportedly asked Sheehan to deliver a three-hour closed-door seminar on the theological implications of contact with extraterrestrial life to the top fifty scientists in SETI at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Representing Luis Elizondo

When Luis Elizondo and Christopher Mellon released videos of UAP encounters to the New York Times, Sheehan became Elizondo's legal representative, filing a complaint with the Inspector General of the Department of Defense alleging defamation and unlawful propagandizing of the American public. In that role he worked to establish new whistleblower protection rules for government officials wishing to share UAP information with Congress.

New Paradigm Institute, Sol Foundation, and the UAP Disclosure Act

Sheehan founded the New Paradigm Institute and was a co-founder of the Sol Foundation, both devoted to UAP policy and research. He was involved in the drafting and advocacy of the UAP Disclosure Act, and the New Paradigm Institute was designated as the sole citizens' nomination group for the nine-person oversight board proposed in the legislation. He gave a dedicated interview to the podcast UFO: WHISTLEBLOWER! on the topic of the U.S. government's controlled disclosure program.

UAP testimony

Through the New Paradigm Institute and his decades of UAP-related legal work, Sheehan has publicly described testimony he has allegedly received on classified programs, including information about UFO crash retrieval operations, the Golden Domes Program, Majestic 12, psionic technology, telepathic craft interfaces, the GATE program, underwater bases, a deathbed confession concerning S-4, and presidential briefings on UAP. Sheehan has stated he is "absolutely, positively" certain the U.S. government is in possession of recovered non-human aircraft, claiming to have personally viewed photographs of them.

Views on the JFK assassination

Sheehan has stated his belief that the CIA was responsible for the death of John F. Kennedy, citing a June 5, 1963 order from JFK directing CIA Director John McCone to brief him on all UAP information — because Kennedy allegedly intended to share it with Nikita Khrushchev — as, according to Sheehan, the precipitating event that caused Allen Dulles to authorize the assassination team.

Main article:

JFK assassination and UFOs

Published works

• People's Advocate: The Life and Legal History of America's Most Fearless Public Interest Lawyer (Counterpoint, 2013). ISBN 978-1619021723
• Introduction to Shadowplay: The Secret Team by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz (Eclipse Books, 1989); also included in Brought to Light: Thirty Years of Drug Smuggling, Arms Deals, and Covert Action.
• Assault on Nicaragua: The Untold Story of the "Secret War" — Speeches by Daniel Sheehan and Daniel Ortega (Walnut Publishing, 1987).
• Contragate: The Secret Team (audio recording, with the Christic Institute, Other Americas Radio, 1987).

See also

• Rendlesham Forest incident

References

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External links

• Official website
• Curriculum vitae (Christic Institute)
• Template:IMDb name
• Template:C-SPAN
• Lakota People's Law Project