The 902nd Military Intelligence Group

by Garrett from Patterns Tell Stories Podcast; @libertybirb on 𝕏.

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“Um, so like disclosure is gonna come out of Huntsville, Alabama, out of Redstone Arsenal. Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama is the biggest fucking deal that you’ve never heard of.”

AMY ESKRIDGE, May 2020 Interview

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In my previous deep-dive exploring the life and career of Major General Albert Stubblebine III, I called the 902nd Military Intelligence Group the “crown jewel” of modern UFO research. Originally called the 902nd Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), the unit was established in November 1944 under General Douglas MacArthur as part of the five-star general’s Philippine invasion force. At the end of World War II, the 902nd CIC detachment was inactivated and later re-activated in January 1952, at the now defunct, Fort Holabird, Maryland, to provide the Department of the Army’s assistant chief of staff for intelligence an organization to handle the most sensitive counterintelligence cases worldwide.

After many years and several name changes, in October 1966 “The Deuce” was re-designated as the 902nd Military Intelligence Group. In July 1974, the group relocated from Fort Holabird to Fort Meade, Maryland. By 1977, the 902nd MI Group became the largest counterintelligence organization in the Department of Defense and a major subordinate command of the US Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM). The 902nd MI Group employed many impressive counterintelligence specialists. In recent years, they have assisted in major espionage cases, including helping convict National Guardsman Ryan Anderson in 2004 for attempting to aid al-Qaida, and DIA Officer Ron Hansen in 2019, who received 10 years for trying to pass information to China.

Readers should note, the 902nd MI Group also maintained a significant field presence through elements of its 308th Military Intelligence Battalion at Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville, where it provided dedicated counterintelligence support to safeguard critical Army missile, aviation, space, and research-and-development programs. Within the continental US, the 308th operates many field offices staffed primarily by counterintelligence special agents. These field offices are the public investigative offices in which anyone can go to in order to report a counterintelligence/security incident.

While the “902nd” was inactivated on July 28, 2022, that same day the US Army Counterintelligence Command (ACIC) was activated as its successor. This was done as part of a broader Army effort to modernize, reorganize, and elevate counterintelligence capabilities.

In my previous article, Counterintelligence and UFOs, I listed a handful of individuals who reportedly served in the 902nd, including Joe McMoneagle, Lyn Buchanan, and Fred “Skip” Atwater. Annie Jacobsen’s 2017 book, Phenomena, describes Atwater as serving “in the 902nd Military Intelligence Group, a division of Army Intelligence called Operations Security, or OPSEC.” Jacobsen also associated Paul H. Smith with the 902nd, describing in one chapter, “It was an Army captain named Paul Smith calling from the 902nd Military Intelligence Group at Fort Meade.” In his 1993 book Mind Trek, Joe McMoneagle is described as “Special Projects Intelligence Officer with the 902nd Military Intelligence Group”. In Lyn Buchanan’s 2003 book, The Seventh Sense, Buchanan claimed the 902nd was also his unit. According to declassified documents, when Gen. Stubblebine was head of Army INSCOM in the 1980s, he requested that the 902nd MI Group provide OPSEC for the Center Lane Program.

When Luis Elizondo dropped his 2024 bestseller, Imminent, he revealed for the first time that he once served in the 902nd Military Intelligence Group. In his book, Elizondo briefly described his role conducting counterintelligence investigations to protect new technologies developed by our government. As Lue put it, “The 902nd MI Group out of Fort Meade, Maryland, was my second assignment, but my duty station was Fort Huachuca, Arizona. I conducted counterintelligence investigations in three states — Nevada, California, and Arizona — to protect the new technologies developed by our government. Laser weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles, rocket engines, and tons of aerospace. My primary job was to lock down sensitive, top secret technology from foreign spies who were targeting major defense contractors like TRW, Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed.”

When investigating the history of INSCOM’s involvement using “psychic spies”, I’d often come across bizarre stories from the remote viewers about Gen. James Dozier’s 1982 rescue from Italian Red Brigade terrorists. Former 902nd member Lyn Buchanan treated the rescue as another feather in the remote viewing program’s hat. As Buchanan described in The Seventh Sense, “The remote viewing unit was tasked with the problem of locating the general. Remote viewer Joe McMoneagle came up with information that directed the police to Padua, Italy, and eventually to the exact building where the general was being held. The official story is that General Dozier had already been rescued before Joe’s information got to the right people, but I have never personally been certain that this was the case.” According to Buchanan, he was recruited to the remote viewing program after he supposedly shut down an intelligence field station’s computers with his mind. The location of this event, per Buchanan’s book, was the US Army Field Station in Augsburg, Germany.

For clarity, that station in Augsburg was the same location six intelligence analysts (often called the “Gulf Breeze Six”) deserted in 1990. The group, according to one of the members, Vance Davis, was released with only a slap on the wrist after then-President George HW Bush mysteriously intervened. Why?

Buchanan seemed to have no idea what the official story of Dozier’s rescue entailed. The actual story was incredible. They found Gen. Dozier with technology. The Red Brigade terrorists used walkie-talkies and radio transceivers for internal coordination and communication with other cells. US and Italian teams intercepted and geolocated those radio signals through a multi-layered electronic system that combined airborne/ground direction finding, frequency scanning, voice intercepts, and satellite signals intelligence (SIGINT). This produced precise enough coordinates to identify multiple safe houses and, ultimately, narrow down the exact Padua apartment where Dozier was held. Valuable signals intelligence support was provided by INSCOM head Gen. Albert Stubblebine, who facilitated an Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) signals intelligence team in Italy. The ISA team used aerial and ground-based systems to monitor and geo-locate the terrorist communications.

Readers may be unaware that Gen. Stubblebine and many of his ’Stargate’ program associates were experts in electronic warfare. One famous member of the ’Stargate’ team, Maj. Ed Dames, was quietly winning awards in the 1980s for accomplishments in electronic warfare. In 1983 (a year after the Dozier rescue), the Association of Old Crows, an electronic warfare (EW) group, gave Gen. Stubblebine their most prestigious award. In Stubblebine’s military intelligence hall of fame biography, it states “He distinguished himself by developing and implementing the echelons above corps portion of the Army Intelligence architecture, and conceiving and developing the first application of Critical Node Targeting on the electronic battlefield.” Stubblebine’s methods reshaped Army intelligence architecture in the early 1980s.

These connections led me to ask two complicated questions: (1) Is remote viewing used as a cover story to protect sensitive electronic warfare systems? (2) Why are former members of the 902nd — a counterintelligence group — the primary ones speaking publicly about UFOs?

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“Our government is not working with reptilian aliens in an underground cave. But the government is doing a lot of really interesting things to pretend that they are as covers for other projects, and a lot of what those things are, are playing with people’s minds. Not only just people within the military, but civilians as well.”

TOM DELONGE, December 2011 Coast to Coast Interview with George Knapp

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When researching the history of the 902nd MI Group, I discovered the work of William Pepper, an attorney well-known for representing the family of Rev. Martin Luther King in a 1999 civil trial, claiming a government conspiracy in MLK’s 1968 assassination. I was particularly fascinated with Mr. Pepper’s controversial characterization of the 902nd MI Group’s involvement with the operation. In his 2016 book, The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, Pepper explained, “USAINT took control of seven of the eight existing counterintelligence or US Army Military Intelligence Groups (MIGs) in the Continental United States (CONUS) and Germany. The eighth MIG — the 902nd — was under the command of the army’s assistant chief of staff of intelligence, who from December 1966 until July 1968 was Major General William P. Yarborough, the founder of the units known as the Green Berets. By 1967, the MIGs employed 798 army officers and 1,532 civilians including 67 black undercover agents. Of this total force, 1,576 were directly involved in domestic intelligence gathering, and of these “spies,” some 260 were civilians. The MIG officers were responsible for eye-to-eye surveillance operations which included audio and visual recordings of people and events designated as targets. Dr. King was a target and throughout the last year of his life was under surveillance by one or another MIG team. Closely related to the USAINT structure at the time was the separate intelligence office under ACSI Yarborough.”

When author Douglas Valentine interviewed Col. Alfred W. Bagot (commander of the 902nd MI Group from June 1968 to November 1968), Valentine asked him if the 902nd MI Group had conducted domestic intelligence operations. According to Valentine, Col. Bagot responded, “Yes! Of course it did. The 902nd MI Group was the principle source (of domestic intelligence) for the US Army Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence.”

Pepper argued that the 902nd MI Group, commanded by Col. John Downie, supplied the military backbone of the MLK assassination. According to Pepper, Downie personally selected four members of the elite Alpha 184 Sniper Unit (Special Forces, attached to the 902nd MI Group) and deployed them to Memphis in civilian disguise. Stationed on rooftops overlooking the Lorraine Motel balcony on April 4, 1968, the team’s orders were to kill Dr. King as backup if the primary shooter (a Memphis police marksman) failed. Downie later confirmed to Pepper’s sources that he coordinated the entire military component of the operation. In response to Pepper, critics dismissed his claims as unsubstantiated and reliant on unreliable witnesses.

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“You know, I was told by the daughter of a briefer of Lyndon Johnson during the war, named John Downie, who was actually the head of the only military intelligence group in the Pentagon — in Washington. Before all that, Downie was a briefer on Vietnam and he used to go back and forth, and he used to brief Johnson. And he always put forward a question in his briefing: ‘Why are we doing this, Mr President? This is a loss of blood and treasure for what? Why are we doing it?’ And he would ask that question every time. And the President never gave him an answer. Finally, one day Johnson got tired of hearing that question, and he pounded the table and he said, ‘John, I can’t get out of Vietnam. My friends are making too much money.’ Now think about it — that’s what it’s all about. Understand. John Downie went home that afternoon and told his wife, ‘Pack your bags. I’m having myself assigned to the embassy in Canada. I’m not doing this anymore. I can’t be an accomplice to the loss of these young American lives.’ So this was a man — extraordinarily complicated and complex issues arise, with a man such as John Downie, because you can see he had this compassion and this concern. But he was called back in ’67 to organize the assassination of Martin King. The military aspects of it all came under Downie. The photographers. The eight-man SWAT team in Memphis. Those shooters were backup — they were not used. But then the photographers were and they did shoot the whole assassination scenario. But Downie controlled all of that. So how, you say? How could this man be a part of such an assassination and at the same time show such humanity? That, for me, is a grey area that has to be acknowledged and has to be dealt with. And the only thing I could come up with on Downie; he regarded King as an enemy of the state. He also probably was a racist, coming from an area of Pennsylvania where racism was call of the hour. So that he saw nothing wrong with getting rid of this enemy of the state, whereas he saw everything wrong with this war in Vietnam. So these are the types of grey-ish conclusions you come to. So you can’t just blatantly condemn all these people as being evil, and I certainly don’t. Downie’s daughters didn’t want to talk to me, but she eventually did, and I interviewed her for three hours and got this story.”

WILLIAM PEPPER, March 2018 Interview with Dan Dicks

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The last notable 902nd connection worth mentioning comes from a December 2021 Reddit post titled, ‘I met Tom Delonge and Luis Elizondo and these are my thoughts.’ The post’s author claimed they were a US Army Counterintelligence Agent, and that nothing in his post was “to be taken as the official stance of the US Government or the US Army”.

The post’s author claimed that while at work in late 2018, he was discussing Project Stargate with a colleague who worked in a SAP in the same building. The colleague mentioned one of his coworkers was a retired CI colonel who had provided cover support to Stargate in the 1980s and offered to introduce the author. The author met the retired colonel, and they had a serious conversation about Stargate and related activities at Fort Meade in the 1980s. The author jokingly asked if they were going to say UFOs are real next. The group became serious, and the colleague asked if the author had ever heard of Luis Elizondo. “He went on to explain that Elizondo was a former Army CI guy like myself and told me that I should look into some of his claims and videos,” the Redditor wrote.

According to the post, the Army CI agent began researching Elizondo and reached out to Tom DeLonge’s To The Stars Academy (TTSA) to request a talk with Lue. “I contacted TTSA, identified myself as a CI agent and said I’d be curious to talk to Elizondo if he was willing, just to discuss this subject in general,” he wrote. Then, he claims, within 24 hours he had a 30 to 60 minute phone call with Elizondo. In this call, the Redditor claims Elizondo said that classified UAP videos were “way crazier,” AATIP was still active, and he would set up a meeting for the author to potentially join AATIP investigations. They jump ahead to the end of January 2019, where OP attended a meeting at a Gateway Marriott (near Pentagon) with Elizondo, Tom DeLonge, and two active USG officials. In this meeting, they were reportedly shown photos of metallic debris fragments and chemical reports and discussed a “biological specimen” belonging to the US government. Privately, OP claims DeLonge told them about creatures coming through portals (one turned a dog into a “grease stain”) and a kind of “cold war” between ET species (one under the oceans, one on the moon). “At the conclusion of this meeting, Elizondo set me up with the two gentlemen at the Pentagon and I left,” he said.

The Redditor then jumps ahead to the end of February 2019, where he met with two US government officials at the Pentagon. “I met with the two gentlemen in a conference room in the Pentagon cleared for up to TS/SCI discussions and material,” he wrote. No formal onboarding or security processing occurred. The two men reportedly backtracked on the biological specimen and said AATIP was no longer active due to funding. When OP asked “where the AATIP’s documents and evidence were” they reportedly told him it was “all transferred to Bob Bigelow and didn’t exist at the Pentagon anymore.” According to OP’s story, the two officials then described an incident where an Italian helicopter was literally shot by a UAP and had to make an emergency landing, that they had obtained this information from the Italians, and that this information was Top Secret (TS/SCI).

Then jump ahead to July 2019. When watching the show Unidentified, OP realized the Marriott meeting had been secretly filmed for the show. He was upset about the portrayal and lack of disclosure. Soon afterwards, OP saw the Italian helicopter story (claimed to be Top Secret) was posted by Tom DeLonge on Instagram and featured on the show, so he filed a report with his field office.

In February 2022, when Lue caught wind of these claims, he posted on X (formerly Twitter): “I’m not looking to disparage anyone, but the individual who claims he was misrepresented indeed misrepresented himself. However, I have no hard feelings towards him and will spare him the unnecessary negative attention.”

Now leap to February 2023, where John Greenewald of The Black Vault website published an article titled, ‘How Secretly Filming a Counterintelligence Agent And Misrepresenting Classified Information Sparked An Official US Army Investigation’. In this article, Greenewald revealed that he had been filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to investigate the CI agent’s story. After over a year of effort, he obtained 64 pages of official US Army “AR 15-6” investigation records (with redactions), including sworn statements from the counterintelligence agent and witnesses, emails, and internal memos.

In these documents, the CI Agent identified himself as “an active duty CI agent with the 902d Ml Group out of Fort Meade, MD”. Of course, a year after Greenewald’s article, Elizondo’s 2024 book Imminent would release, and Lue would reveal for the first time he also served in the 902nd MI Group. The same exact unit as the individual supposedly launching an investigation into him. A bit different than “Elizondo was a former Army CI guy like myself”, but I suppose it’s close enough for the UFO researchers. I do not believe that the Reddit post’s author was ignorant about the history of the 902nd. I also do not believe the so-called “journalists” covering UFOs are this ignorant about this unit. Readers should ask themselves why we haven’t even heard Elizondo’s biggest critics, such as the New York Post’s Steven Greenstreet, mention Lue’s ties to the 902nd MI Group. No journalist covering UFOs has even brushed the history of the 902nd or INSCOM’s true level of involvement with the UFO topic. Try bringing it up yourself. I called Greenstreet’s reporting diarrhea, so he sent me 9 hours of his dinobeaver investigation. I think the UFO community is being taken for a ride by a group much more capable and much more organized.

Also, a few online posts bizarrely claim that the latin phrases featured in the Immaculate Constellation document, “Scientia Igne Probata” (Knowledge Tested by Fire) and “Veritas Per Fidem” (Truth Through Faith) are associated with the U.S. Army’s 902nd MI Group. This is false, and I still don’t understand why certain UFO researchers bent over backwards to make fake connections to the unit. I’ll put that to rest now. The 902nd Military Intelligence Group’s confirmed motto is “Strength Through Vigilance”.

Thank you all for your continued support.

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References:

[1] Amy Eskridge May 2020 Interview;

[2] My article, Major General Albert Stubblebine III; https://libertybirb.substack.com/p/major-general-albert-stubblebine

[3] 902nd MI Group History; https://www.army.mil/article/229772/902nd_military_intelligence_group_celebrates_75_years

[4] My article, Counterintelligence and UFOs; https://libertybirb.substack.com/p/counterintelligence-and-ufos

[5] Phenomena by Annie Jacobsen (2017)

[6] Mind Trek by Joe McMoneagle (1993)

[7] The Seventh Sense by Lyn Buchanan (2003)

[8] Imminent by Luis Elizondo (2024)

[9] Vance Davis “Gulf Breeze Six” Interview with Art Bell;

[10] Killer Elite: The Inside Story of America’s Most Secret Special Operations Team by Michael Smith (2006)

[11] Tom DeLonge, December 2011 Coast to Coast Interview with George Knapp; https://www.coasttocoastam.com/show/2011-12-18-show/

[12] The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr by William Pepper (2016)

[13] Deconstructing Kowalski: The DOJ’s Strange MLK Report by Doug Valentine (2000); https://www.kennedysandking.com/images/pdf/valentine-kowalski.pdf

[14] William Pepper, March 2018 Interview with Dan Dicks;

[15] I met Tom Delonge and Luis Elizondo and these are my thoughts. (REDDIT POST); https://www.reddit.com/r/aliens/comments/rjguh7/i_met_tom_delonge_and_luis_elizondo_and_these_are/

[16] ‘How Secretly Filming a Counterintelligence Agent And Misrepresenting Classified Information Sparked An Official US Army Investigation’ by John Greenewald (2023); https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/how-secretly-filming-a-counterintelligence-agent-and-misrepresenting-classified-information-sparked-an-official-us-army-investigation/

[17] 902nd Military Intelligence Group Unit Crest (Strength Through Vigilance); https://www.usamm.com/products/902nd-military-intelligence-group-unit-crest-strength-through-vigilance