Jonathan Weygandt
Jonathan Weygandt is a former U.S. Marine lance corporal who testified in the Disclosure Project's 2001 National Press Club briefing that in April 1997, while serving in Operation Laser Strike in Peru, he and other Marines received orders to secure a crash site in a highland rainforest where he personally observed a non-human craft — egg-shaped, approximately 10 meters tall and 20 meters long, embedded in a cliff face at 45 degrees — and was ordered to stand close range before being threatened with death and removed from the scene by a Department of Energy retrieval team.
Background and deployment
Weygandt graduated from Mount Tabor High School in Salem, North Carolina in June 1995, having enlisted in the Marine Corps under the Delayed Entry Program in July 1994. He attended boot camp beginning 18 June 1995 and graduated on 8 September 1995. His original Military Occupational Specialty was 0311 (infantry rifleman), and he was sent to the School of Infantry at Camp Geiger, North Carolina; however, he did not complete infantry training due to a back injury and was reassigned to a new MOS — 7212, Stinger/Avenger gunner — and sent to Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas for air defense training from February to late May 1996. He was then assigned to his first duty station with the 2nd Low Altitude Air Defense Battalion, Marine Corps Air Control Group 28, stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point. He was trained as a low-altitude air defense gunner with specific training on Stinger man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS) and Avenger surface-to-air missile platforms. In February 1997 he was transferred to Operation Laser Strike in Peru — a classified U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) counter-narcotics operation involving up to 20 U.S. agencies including the DEA, CIA, Air Force, National Guard, Army Special Forces, and Peruvian military forces. The operation tracked approximately 45,000 aircraft in the twelve-month period from April 1996 to April 1997, using TPS-43 and RELOCATABLE ABLE ARCHER radar systems and possibly covert satellite support from the Defense Support Program.
While on guard duty at the radar installation, Weygandt overheard two U.S. Air Force personnel discussing radar tracks of aircraft flying in and out of the atmosphere at Mach 10 and above — objects re-entering, stopping on a dime, reversing direction. Approximately 30 minutes after this conversation, an Air Force colonel entered the command center and confiscated the logbooks recording the flight data. Weygandt estimated this happened three or four times during his deployment.
The crash site
Main article:
1997 Peru UFO crash retrieval
Between 11:00 p.m. and midnight in the March–April 1997 period, Weygandt was approached by Staff Sergeant Monte Legg, Sergeant Allen, and Sergeant Adkins and told that a possibly-friendly aircraft had gone down and that Marines were needed to secure the crash site. By 3:00–4:00 a.m. they were moving in Humvees through the jungle; by 6:00–7:00 a.m. they had reached the site on foot, arriving at dawn.
The approach made clear something extraordinary had happened: the vegetation had been sliced rather than broken, as though cut by a laser or intense heat source. Trees were cut cleanly, as if through warm butter, rather than snapped as in a conventional aircraft crash. The path of the object was visible as a massive gash in the land. Weygandt and Sergeants Allen and Adkins were 10–20 meters ahead of the other Marines and were the first to see the object — a massive metallic egg-shaped craft, approximately 10 meters tall and 20 meters long, embedded in the cliff face at a 45-degree angle. Three trailer-widths across, it had burned itself into the rock a foot or two deep on contact.
Description of the craft
The craft was the best described by Weygandt as metallic but organic — "sculpted" rather than manufactured. Its surface was purplish-green, fluctuating in color like gasoline in water, shifting between green, purple, and nearly translucent silver in a constant motion he compared to "a chemical rainbow" on soapy water. At points the craft became almost fully translucent. The surface did not reflect sunlight and cast no shadow on surrounding objects — it appeared to absorb rather than reflect light. No seams, rivets, or welds were visible anywhere on the hull. Compass equipment in the area was inoperable — spinning without finding north.
A large circumferential sweeping light traveled around the craft's perimeter, slowing progressively, accompanied by a deep, loud bass hum that Weygandt described as resembling a guitar amplifier's unplugged hum "several orders of magnitude louder" — a sound that eventually dimmed and went silent as the light slowed to a stop. Three hatches were visible near the top of the craft, one of them ajar. Through the open hatch no interior light was visible — "like looking into a closet." Large gill-like vents ran down the free-standing side of the craft; these were the only parts that cast a shadow, suggesting the rest of the hull was in some way optically anomalous. A viscous, clear, syrup-thick liquid was dripping from the open hatch, flowing over the surrounding vegetation. The liquid was purplish-green in places, and where it contacted Weygandt's skin it caused a burning reaction; the hair on his legs never regrew after exposure. His uniform was discolored as if by acid and was subsequently confiscated.
Occupant description
In his comprehensive interview with UAP researcher UAP Gerb — conducted in person and released in 2025, drawing on raw tape recordings from the original 2000 Steven Greer sessions — Weygandt described the occupants as having been perceived telepathically rather than directly viewed. He described them as tall — eight to ten feet in height — with elongated, oblong heads of a shape he distinguished from the classic short "gray" description associated with the Communion cover artwork: "not fat like that. They were more skinnier but they were also like on a kind of a skinny heart." He described a small nose, small mouth, no ears, and large eyes — consistent with Gray anatomy in general morphology but differing in scale and head shape from the most commonly depicted variant.
A four-fingered arm was visible hanging limply from the open hatch, suggesting at least one occupant was alive or recently alive at the point of the Marines' arrival. Weygandt observed what appeared to be one being near death from the crash impact.
Occupant and telepathic contact
A detail omitted from the edited version of Weygandt's 2000 interview with Steven Greer — but present in the raw tape recordings from which UAP researcher UAP Gerb reconstructed the account — is that as Weygandt moved closer to the craft — running up to it while Sergeants Allen and Adkins stood back shouting at him to stop — he experienced what he described as a telepathic contact: a sense of presence reaching into his mind, projecting the information that the beings were not there to harm humanity, and requesting help. He described it as "like someone was reading your mind" and "like somebody was shooting a spotlight on me."
The experience was accompanied by an auditory component — a white noise sensation "almost like sitting in your car and turning on an AM station that's not tuned, just white noise, turned up really high" — which Weygandt interpreted as the initial phase of the telepathic contact before it resolved into the projected communication. He reported that the experience has persisted: he has continued to see the beings in his thoughts in the years since the incident, describing recurring dreams or mental images of their appearance.
UAP Gerb noted in his 2025 analysis that Weygandt's description — a craft controlled by psionic/consciousness interface — anticipates by decades the 2024–2025 wave of testimony about "psionics" in UAP retrieval programs, including the 2024 public statements of Jake Barber and witnesses associated with the Skywatchers network. The 2000 date of Weygandt's original recorded testimony gives his psionic contact claim particular evidential weight as an early, independent data point predating any public framework for such claims.
Retrieval team and security response
After the Marines secured the perimeter — Weygandt estimated he was at the site for approximately 15–20 minutes total — a rapid-response retrieval team arrived. Weygandt identified the team as Department of Energy personnel, noting some wore jackets with "DOE" markings. Personnel were in varying containment gear — some in biological suits with breathing apparatus, others in black camouflage — approximately 30 of them marching toward the crash site as Weygandt was being taken away. Two U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopters had landed in a gap in the jungle nearby. The retrieval team personnel bore no insignia or unit identification, spoke with American accents, and were older — in their late thirties and forties — than typical military field personnel. They showed immediate hostility and aggression toward the Marines.
The craft was assessed by Weygandt — based on subsequent study of ballistics — as having been downed by a MIM-23 Hawk surface-to-air missile fired by the Peruvian Air Force, possibly an air-burst fragmentation round that got close enough to damage but not destroy the vehicle.
Weygandt was subsequently held and interrogated for approximately eight to nine hours — handcuffed to a chair in an interrogation room with a light in his face, denied food and water for a full day, and told repeatedly that he would be taken into the jungle and killed. An unidentified Air Force Lieutenant Colonel told him directly: "If we just took you out in the jungle, they'd never find you out there." One of the interrogators — whom Weygandt recognized from the crash site — identified himself as operating outside any constitutional authority, telling Weygandt: "We're on our own program... we don't obey. We just do what we want." He was segregated from his unit with Air Force personnel for approximately three weeks before being returned. His uniform and any affected personal equipment was confiscated.
Aftermath
After returning from the segregation, Weygandt approached Sergeant Allen at his base housing to discuss the incident; Allen became upset and threw Weygandt out of his house, refusing to talk about it — Weygandt concluded the retrieval team had intimidated Allen and the other witnesses as well. Weygandt reported the incident to his First Sergeant, First Sergeant Powell, refusing to stay silent; this act of defiance resulted in his being railroaded out of the Marine Corps. Weygandt later discovered that six months of his service records had been retroactively removed from the database — not merely classified, but erased entirely.
Weygandt assessed the retrieval operation as the work of a completely rogue entity operating without government oversight or constitutional authority, financed through arms sales and drug trafficking rather than government appropriations.
The experience caused a profound existential and spiritual crisis for Weygandt, who had been raised in a Christian household; encountering non-human beings forced a total re-evaluation of his understanding of reality, which he compared to a child learning Santa Claus is not real — "now that you know, there's no going back." Weygandt reported recurring visions or dreams in which the beings were present with him — holding his hands, touching him — and described an intense longing to be with them again, which he attributed to the emotional residue of the telepathic contact. He remained silent for approximately three years before contacting Steven Greer's Disclosure Project organization in August 2000, two months before his recorded testimony was made.
Disclosure Project testimony
Weygandt gave sworn testimony to the Disclosure Project prior to the 2001 National Press Club briefing and his testimony was included in Steven Greer's Disclosure: Military and Government Witnesses Reveal the Greatest Secrets in Modern History (2001). He was one of approximately 20 military and government witnesses who testified publicly at the briefing and offered to testify before Congress under oath. His account is notable for the specificity of the observation — close physical proximity, extended viewing time, and direct threat afterward — and for being a Marine rather than an Air Force or intelligence community witness.
Greer's edited version of the 2000 tape interview omitted the four-fingered arm detail — a redaction first identified by independent researchers "Reg UFO" and "Taco" in 2023 work on the case. Filmmaker James Fox also asked questions during the original taping that were cut from the published interview. In a 2025 interview with Jesse Michels, Fox confirmed he had been present for Weygandt's original testimony session: "I was actually there for that interview and I went around the country with Steven Greer." Fox recalled that Weygandt "was so paranoid at the time... he was beat up. He was paranoid," that he "went right up to the craft," and that "there was like a green liquid dripping out of it." Fox described Weygandt as having "left an indelible impression on me because I saw behind the scenes how terrified he was." Michels characterized Greer's editing as having been done "in a weird way." In 2023 Weygandt appeared on a podcast with Martin Willis to revisit the account, his only further public discussion prior to the comprehensive interview conducted in person by UAP Gerb, in which the arm detail, the occupant description, the auditory telepathy component, and the adverse health effects (leg hair loss) were discussed for the first time at length.
Comparison with Michael Herrera
Weygandt's 1997 Peru encounter has been compared with the 2009 Indonesia encounter claimed by Michael Herrera, another U.S. Marine — also documented in a Shawn Ryan Show episode — who described discovering a large UAP being loaded with humanitarian aid supplies in a jungle clearing in Sumatra, surrounded by a mixed-nationality security force that threatened the Marines present. Both cases involve Marines discovering classified non-human craft in jungle environments during multi-agency operations; both involve immediate threats to the Marines to ensure silence; and both involve retrieval or operations teams bearing no standard military insignia.