Jake Barber

Jake Barber (also Jacob Barber) is a former United States Air Force enlisted man and long-serving covert contractor for the U.S. intelligence community who came forward in 2025 as a UAP whistleblower, claiming to have personally participated in multiple non-human craft retrieval operations conducted by a secret legacy program. His account was first brought to wide public attention through a special NewsNation investigative broadcast hosted by journalist Ross Coulthart titled Hunting UFO, and then expanded in a full-length interview published on Barber's own Spotify channel. Prior to going public, Barber provided top-secret SCI-level testimony to Congress inside a SCIF, fulfilling a commitment made to fellow UAP advocate David Grusch.

Background and military career

Barber was born in the 1970s and raised in a difficult family environment, spending much of his childhood outdoors and developing a high degree of self-reliance from a young age. His grandfather, a retired school superintendent and Navy veteran with ties to the Scouts and Raiders — predecessor to the Navy SEALs — arranged for Barber to undergo a battery of physical, psychological, and creative tests at a facility near UCLA when Barber was seventeen, connected to the GATE program and covert Air Force screening for psychic potential.

In September 1994, Barber enlisted in the Air Force under a guaranteed training contract for the Combat Control career field, entering the Air Force Special Operations Command pipeline at Operating Location Hotel. At a certain point in his pipeline, he was allegedly recruited into a covert capacity and persuaded to adopt aerospace mechanic as a cover occupation, subsequently assigned to Pope Air Force Base and an obscure unit called the Dash 21 Dual Rail Shop. His DD-214 discharge document lists him as an aerospace mechanic and records a sharpshooter achievement, while suppressing his actual special operations training and covert deployments.

Outside his cover role, Barber trained in parachuting, SCUBA diving, weapons, helicopter piloting, and emergency medicine through what he described as extracurricular "clubs," and was deployed as an opposition force (OPFOR) red-team expert, stress-testing blue-force units in both training and real-world scenarios. He was deployed in Bosnia in support of the hunt for war criminals, received a heroism medal recommendation for a classified mission there, and operated as a security escort for high-value targets (HVTs) around the world under NATO top-secret clearance. The medal recommendation was suppressed by his case officer to avoid drawing attention to the covert role.

Following the September 11 attacks, Barber separated from the Air Force and relocated to California to establish legitimate business cover as an independent contractor, obtaining a commercial helicopter pilot license and setting up companies providing aerial services — firefighting, external load operations, and Bureau of Indian Affairs contracts — while on standby for covert UAP-related tasking.

UAP retrieval operations

Multiple retrieval operations for non-human craft were conducted, with Barber working as a helicopter pilot and external-load specialist on what he describes as a classified range in the highest mountain terrain in the continental United States. Two distinct craft types were recovered.

The egg

The first craft Barber recovered — which he and his team nicknamed "Nanu" (after the Mork and Mindy character) — was an approximately 20-foot pearlescent-white, seamless egg-shaped object roughly the size of a large SUV. The recovery was conducted at night using night-vision goggles from a Bell 212 helicopter on a 150–200-foot long-line. The object displayed no visible propulsion system and no thermal signature. As Barber flew the craft on the sling-line the approximately 20 miles between pick site and drop site, he experienced an overwhelming emotional and telepathic sensation — the presence of a "feminine energy" or "the spirit of God" — causing him to weep in the cockpit; he attributed this to the craft — or whatever consciousness was connected to it — making direct mental contact with him. Barber later stated that senior members of the UAP task force confirmed to him that the egg was a known non-human craft.

The octagonal disc

The second craft type — nicknamed the "eightgon" — was a disc-shaped object that, when viewed from above, had eight symmetrical sections delineated by ridges. More than one of these objects made its way to the ground on the relevant operation; initial recovery was conducted at night, with additional material recovered the following day because of the deep mountain terrain. The craft was covered in rubberized "pumpkin" containment bags during transport. Barber connected the description to reports from Marine Michael Herrera, who described an enormous octagonal craft hovering over Sumatra, Indonesia in 2009, and recognized the containers seen beneath it as mobile operating bases used by the psionic assets team. I don't know how the editing of this works, or if anyone will see this, but the telepathic description is not for the egg...it's for the octagonal disc! This is covered in the NewsNation interview and in the Jesse Michels interview.

Five-phase retrieval protocol

A five-phase operational protocol is used by the legacy program: (1) a calling/summoning phase using either human psionic assets or machine-based lure systems; (2) a communication and data-collection phase in which the craft's responses to stimuli are measured; (3) a capture phase, sometimes using high-powered microwave weapons to force the craft down; (4) a physical recovery phase using helicopter long-line and containment bags; and (5) delivery to a secure facility.

Psionic program

A classified sub-program designated "P3" (Psionic Predisposition Potential), which recruited individuals — including Native Americans, people from what he called spiritually intact third-world cultures, children, and others identified as psychically sensitive — to mentally summon, communicate with, and guide UAP to landing. On the night the egg was recovered, a psionics team was operating concurrently and had likely attracted the craft in the first place.

Radiation exposure and health effects

During a transport mission near the continent of Africa involving a large sealed container classified as a high-value target, Barber and his entire team fell severely ill within weeks: Barber personally lost all body hair (migrating alopecia), shed the skin on his arms, and later developed a severe heart murmur and recurring autoimmune dysfunction — a health profile matching that of John Burroughs, an airman exposed to anomalous radiation during the 1980 Rendlesham Forest incident. Barber was not treated for radiation exposure at the time because the classified nature of the mission prevented disclosure of causation to the VA; he was subsequently placed under the care of immunologist Garry Nolan at the Palo Alto VA. More than half of the personnel involved in similar operations suffer some form of health effects.

Disclosure

High Sierra laptop recovery and break with program

After 2018, Barber and his team were tasked as part of a covert high-value-target operation to recover six missing Panasonic Toughbook laptops believed to contain sensor video data — potentially including illegal recordings of UAP retrieval operations — that had gone missing from a private aerospace company. The team recovered two of the laptops — with hard drives missing — from a remote location in the High Sierra, and subsequently located the hard drives sealed in a steel container 25 feet underwater in a glacial lake high in the Sierras. The team never recovered them. Before the next mission the team's intelligence contact and the rhythm of its intelligence changed, its information kept changing at the last minute, and it was assigned a partnered air asset in place of its own; the American Alchemy host Jesse Michels describes a new intelligence contact, new coordinates and a new chain of command, and an ambush waiting at the target. When the team reached the location the targets were gone and shots had been fired, and Barber withdrew it, telling his dispatcher "we're out, we're done". He has said he believed the team was being set up as "the hidden hand that gets severed" — a deniable patsy for the material's capture. Don Paul Bales, a 25-year military and law-enforcement veteran, has said he worked under Barber on the operation. Barber says at least two adversarial parties "would do anything to get their hands on" the drives, and that two investigations into the matter are under way, one of them by the FBI. He describes the drives as holding evidence of crimes: data captured illegally during crash-retrieval operations in the program, which a whistleblower or group of whistleblowers intended to turn over to expose the program and the individuals involved. He places the strongest motive to keep such evidence hidden with individuals inside the organization who have committed crimes and want to protect themselves.

On the next deployment, Barber observed mid-mission changes in the intelligence channel and the substitution of his team's own air asset for an unknown one; upon arrival at the target location, the hardware was gone, shots had been fired, and Barber concluded his team had been set up as patsies — potentially to be framed as the thieves of the sensitive material. He severed ties with his tasking authority, rebuilt his team from scratch, and eventually approached the director of security of the aerospace firm directly, learning the senior leadership claimed ignorance and advised going to an inspector general — advice Barber did not immediately follow.

Congressional testimony

Barber subsequently reached out to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence seeking protection and support, only to find members of Congress felt threatened themselves and were requesting his advice on personal security rather than offering whistleblower protection.

After the NewsNation broadcast advanced public discussion of his story, Barber entered a SCIF at the invitation of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and provided top-secret SCI-level testimony for a session lasting four and a half hours — longer than the scheduled two-hour block — with seven to ten committee members and staff present. He stated he would be willing to testify under oath, as David Grusch, David Fravor, and Ryan Graves had done before the House Oversight Committee in 2023.

NewsNation broadcast and Coulthart interview

Barber was first introduced to Coulthart approximately two years before going public. His account appeared in a condensed form in the NewsNation special Hunting UFO, then in full in a 167-minute interview on Barber's own Spotify channel published as Full interview w/ Ross Coulthart, NewsNation (hosted on Coulthart's Reality Check feed). He confirmed he received no payment for the interview and derived no financial benefit from the disclosure.

A Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review (DOPSR) review requirement binds him; the agencies, programs, or aerospace companies involved cannot be named, and disclosing redacted material could result in criminal prosecution. Prior to going public, a fictionalized 10,000-word manuscript was submitted through the DOPSR process as a reconnaissance operation — the government's redactions of four categories of embedded information would identify which agencies held UAP compartments and confirm what material remained classified. Seven pages of redactions were returned six months later.

Skywatcher and private venture

Following his break from the legacy program, Barber formed an organization called Skywatcher, described as part of the Explorers Club, funded by venture capital and working in coordination with undisclosed U.S. government agencies, with the stated goal of conducting open, transparent UAP detection, summoning, and retrieval operations and sharing all sensor data publicly. On Skywatcher's first outing, the team summoned a white egg-shaped craft in broad daylight and captured sensor data indicating the object was traveling between 3,000 and 11,000 mph.

Mainstream coverage

In a conversation between journalists Jesse Michels and Danny Jones, Michels described Barber as having been "pipeline[d] through Air Force Combat Control" — the Air Force's equivalent of special forces — before being "sheep dipped" into an intelligence cover identity as a helicopter company director of operations, working with secret aerospace contractors on crash retrieval operations. Jones observed that Barber's story had failed to penetrate mainstream media awareness, noting that "the UFO world has cleaved off and is on another island of reality from mainstream media" and that mainstream audiences had "no idea who Jake Barber is" despite the significance of his claims.

Open questions

References

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