1997 Peru UFO crash retrieval
Between March and April 1997, during Operation Laser Strike — a classified U.S. Southern Command counter-narcotics operation in the Peruvian jungle — a non-human craft reportedly came down in the rocky face of a granite ridge near a U.S. Marine perimeter-security position, and a U.S. Department of Energy recovery team was deployed to secure and retrieve the downed object. The episode is known as the 1997 Peru UFO crash retrieval. The primary witness is former U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Jonathan Weygandt, who first gave testimony on the incident in 2000 through Steven Greer's Disclosure Project and appeared again in 2023 and in a subsequent in-person discussion with researcher UAP Gerb.
Background and deployment
Jonathan Weygandt joined the Marine Corps in 1995 and served until 1998 within the 2nd Low Altitude Air Defense Battalion, Marine Corps Air Control Group 28, stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. In 1997 he was deployed with MACG-28 to Bupa, Peru to support Operation Laser Strike as perimeter security for radar installations, specifically to replace aging MIM-23 Hawk missile batteries with Stinger and Avenger platforms. Operation Laser Strike was a classified United States Southern Command counter-narcotics operation involving up to 20 U.S. agencies including the DEA, CIA, Air Force, and Peruvian Air Force.
While on guard duty at his radar installation, Weygandt overheard U.S. Air Force personnel discussing aircraft tracked flying in and out of the atmosphere at Mach 10 or faster, after which an Air Force colonel entered the command center and confiscated the log books tracking that flight data. The confiscation of log books was not a one-time occurrence; the same Air Force officer returned to seize flight records on at least three or four separate occasions during Weygandt's duty rotation, suggesting persistent anomalous aerial activity in the area. The logged flight data documented objects re-entering the atmosphere, stopping instantaneously, and reversing direction — maneuvers incompatible with any known aircraft or natural phenomenon.
The radar installation itself was a permanent, sophisticated underground facility — a camouflaged bunker built beneath the earth — equipped with air conditioning, linked computer systems, and control panels, as well as large laser rangefinders housed in retractable bunkers capable of rotating and zooming. The scope of personnel and equipment — including Green Berets, Delta Force, Army Airborne, and Chinese military trainers working alongside Peruvian forces — suggested the installation's mission extended well beyond narcotics interdiction.
Discovery of the crash site
One night between March and April 1997, at approximately 11:00 p.m.–midnight, Weygandt was approached by Staff Sergeant Monte Legg, Sergeant Allen, and Sergeant Adkins and told that a possibly friendly aircraft had come down and that Marines were needed to secure the crash site. A group of eight Marines in five or six Humvees departed around 3:00–4:00 a.m.; after driving and trekking through jungle they arrived at the site around 6:00–7:00 a.m. at dawn.
The crash site was found easily because of a large gash cut through the jungle landscape, with surrounding vegetation burned in a manner Weygandt compared to cutting warm butter with a knife — as if by laser energy rather than conventional impact. Weygandt, Allen, and Adkins formed the vanguard; Weygandt got closest of all the Marines to the object, which was embedded at a 45-degree angle in the rocky face of an approximately 200-foot solid granite ridge.
Description of the craft
The craft was a massive metallic egg- or teardrop-shaped vehicle, approximately 10 metres in height and 20 metres in length. Its surface was purplish-green and shifted color in a manner Weygandt likened to gasoline on water or soap bubbles — an effect described by UAP Gerb as the "mother of pearl" effect — and occasionally the craft appeared nearly translucent. The object appeared not to be assembled from machine parts but sculpted, metallic yet organic-looking, almost as if alive. The surface, while appearing metallic, had no reflective properties whatsoever — direct sunlight produced no shine or glint of any kind, as though the material absorbed all incident light. Up close, the surface was not uniformly smooth but featured bumps, notches, and textural details that gave it the quality of art or handcraft rather than industrial fabrication. The craft was believed to be controlled directly by the occupants' thoughts, with no visible buttons, switches, or conventional control interfaces — essentially an extension of the beings' own bodies.
The craft did not cast a shadow despite direct sunlight, appearing to absorb light with no reflection. Along its free-standing side were large vents resembling fish gills, which Weygandt speculated were used for propulsion; the recessed vents were the only feature on the craft that cast any shadow at all, their depth creating the sole visible darkness on the otherwise light-absorbing surface. Three seemingly non-flush hatches sat near the top of the craft, one of them half open.
The disabled craft was dripping a clear, syrup-thick liquid that had poured over the surrounding foliage; Weygandt stated the liquid appeared to originate from the open hatch. The liquid contacted Weygandt's uniform and skin, discoloring his camouflage like acid and causing the hair on both his arms and legs to fall out, which he reported had never fully grown back.
A single sweeping light circled the circumference of the craft and slowed until the vehicle powered off; Weygandt described the accompanying sound as resembling a bass guitar amplifier, deep and loud, which then fell silent.
Weygandt additionally observed what appeared to be a four-fingered arm hanging limply from the open hatch, and reported a telepathic sense of presence from the craft's occupants projecting that they meant no harm and were requesting help. He described the occupants as tall — eight to ten feet — with elongated, oblong heads, large eyes, small mouths, and no visible ears, resembling the classic Grey alien form but of much larger stature. The telepathic contact conveyed not only a message — that the beings meant no harm and were requesting help to escape — but a distinct emotional quality: a warm, familial feeling, as though the occupants were projecting reassurance and affection. There were an estimated four or five occupants aboard the craft. Weygandt's compass spun erratically near the craft.
Weygandt believed the craft had been downed by a Peruvian Air Force MIM-23 Hawk surface-to-air missile, based on a large gash in the craft's rear he later attributed to Hawk fragmentation munitions.
DOE retrieval team and apprehension
After approximately 15–20 minutes at the crash site, Weygandt and the Marines climbed back to the ridge and were intercepted by armed men in black battle-dress uniforms bearing no rank, name tapes, patches, or insignia, who spoke with American accents and were described as older — late thirties to forties. Simultaneously, Army CH-47 Chinook helicopters landed in a nearby clearing, deploying a team of approximately 30 personnel wearing DOE-marked rain jackets and biological containment suits described as high-tech zip-up jumpsuits with breathing apparatus. The entire retrieval operation moved with a practiced, routine efficiency that indicated the team had performed this type of recovery before — the atmosphere was one of total professionalism with a cold, unassuming demeanor.
Weygandt struck one of the black-clad operators and was beaten, restrained face-down on the jungle floor, and stripped to his underwear by personnel in containment suits, who discarded his liquid-contaminated clothing; his hands were cuffed and feet bound before he was placed on a stretcher. He was then isolated from Allen and Adkins and taken by helicopter — with a blacked-out mask over his head — to an unknown facility described as partially a Peruvian military installation, featuring more permanent structures than his radar site and personnel of multiple nationalities including Chinese and German speakers.
At this facility, Weygandt was held for up to 48 hours in an underground interrogation room, handcuffed to a chair under a bright light, given no food or water for a full day, and subjected to approximately 8–9 hours of sustained verbal threats and psychological pressure. One of the interrogators, recognized as having been present at the crash site in black fatigues, asked Weygandt whether he was a patriot who liked the Constitution, then stated that the recovery operation did not answer to the Constitution and operated as a self-directed program with no oversight or legal constraints. Toward the end of his confinement, an unnamed Air Force lieutenant colonel bearing no name tag visited and threatened Weygandt's life — stating the operation would have no trouble leaving him dead in the jungle — before compelling him to sign two non-disclosure documents. Weygandt was subsequently driven — not flown — back to his original radar installation, indicating the interrogation facility was within driving distance. The recovery operatives were characterized as a rogue element with no governmental oversight, no accountability, and unlimited funding believed to derive not from official government appropriations but from illicit arms and narcotics trafficking.
Aftermath
Weygandt was segregated with Air Force personnel at his original base for approximately three weeks before being returned to Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. Upon returning to Cherry Point, Weygandt approached Sergeant Allen at his on-base housing to discuss the incident, but Allen became visibly upset and threw Weygandt out of his house, refusing to speak about it — the intimidation campaign had effectively silenced the other witnesses. Weygandt reported the incident to First Sergeant Powell at Cherry Point, but the monolithic institutional culture of the Marine Corps ensured that anyone who did not comply with the enforced silence was railroaded.
By May 1997 he experienced recurring nightmares, missing time, and disturbing dreams that had not occurred before the crash encounter; he has stated there were internal Marine Corps efforts to make him appear unstable and an unreliable witness. The encounter triggered a profound existential and spiritual crisis; raised in a Christian home, Weygandt found the existence of non-human beings forced a complete re-evaluation of everything he had been taught, producing a psychological rupture from which there was no returning. In the months following the incident, Weygandt developed a persistent psychological fixation on the beings and an obsessive desire to leave with them, driven by the contrast between the warm telepathic contact he had experienced and the brutal treatment by the recovery operatives. By late 1997, Weygandt used banned substances to secure a discharge from the Marine Corps; he was officially discharged in March 1998.
Disclosure and testimony
Weygandt's first recorded testimony was given in 2000 through the Disclosure Project led by Steven Greer; researcher UAP Gerb later discovered that Greer's published 2000 interview omitted several details, including Weygandt's description of a four-fingered arm visible in the open hatch, and that Greer drew from unedited raw tape files held in the Disclosure Project archive. In 2023 Weygandt appeared on a podcast with Martin Willis but, per UAP Gerb, explored little new ground at that time. His most detailed public account was given in an in-person interview with UAP Gerb released in 2025–2026, covering new details of the encounter, adverse health effects, and reprisals he experienced.
UAP Gerb and independent researchers RG UFO and Taco have each separately investigated the case and reached broadly consistent conclusions regarding the identity of the DOE recovery team, which UAP Gerb proposes was the Nuclear Emergency Support Team (NEST), a specialized Department of Energy rapid-response unit historically linked to Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Filmmaker James Fox, who was present during the original Disclosure Project interview session with Weygandt and operated the camera, independently described the encounter in 2025, recalling that Weygandt was visibly terrified, had debated at the last minute whether to come forward, and mentioned threats that he could be thrown from a helicopter into the jungle and never found — a detail he stated left an indelible impression on him even decades later. Fox recalled the craft's color as purplish-green, shifting like a fluctuating iridescent field, dripping liquid, buried at a 45-degree angle into the cliff face — details consistent with the more extended UAP Gerb account — and noted that Weygandt reported telepathic communication from the craft's occupants.